Redux
by PteraWaters
Summary: When the Jeffersonian team broke up, supposedly for an entire year, no one expected a case to pull them back together so soon. Picks up at Season 5's finale. Ensemble piece, a little bit of everyone. Canon pairings. Mystery/Romance/Humor/Action, etc.
1. Prologue

**Redux**

Chapter 1 - Prologue

As he watched the plane headed for Jakarta take off, Dr. Lance Sweets knew he'd made the biggest mistake of his life. How could he have talked himself into giving up Daisy? He'd proved he was Mr. Adventure, hadn't he? And what was one year away from his career? He was younger than most of his peers, by several years. He could afford to take a year off.

Hell, he could probably convince the FBI to keep him on as a part-time, long-distance consultant. It's not like it was the nineteenth century. There were computers and satellites and, "Oh God, what have I done?"

He ran through the airport, not caring that all the TSA security people watched him with concern. Lance knew that there was only one way to rectify this mistake, and it meant blowing most of the money he'd saved up for the wedding. Well, if he didn't fix this, he wouldn't need that money anyway.

"Hey!" he cried, skidding to a stop in front of one of the ticket counters, the company logo matching that on the plane that had taken Daisy away from him. "I need a ticket to Jakarta, right away!"

The man behind the counter frowned up at Lance, eyeing the line of people behind him. "I'm sorry, sir," the guy drawled gruffly, "the flight to Jakarta just departed."

"I know!" the psychologist cried in frustration. "I want to be on the next plane. I don't care if it takes forty hours straight! I'm getting my girl back!"

"Our next flight to Jakarta," the clerk said, his voice carefully neutral, "leaves the day after tomorrow. I would ask that if you would like to purchase airfare, you please step to the end of the line."

"Day after tomorrow?" Sweets asked, his heart crushing under the weight of all that time. But then again, "Okay! Okay, that's perfect! Thank you so much," checking the man's nametag, he continued, "Mr. Kelly. Thanks!"

Amid the confused and angry expressions surrounding him, Lance Sweets sprinted back to his car. If he was going to do this right, there were preparations that needed to be made. Letters to write, asses to kiss, and luggage to pack.

He'd never been so sure of anything in his life.

* * *

Another man watched that plane take off, and his reaction was the opposite. Instead of convincing himself he'd made a mistake letting Bones go, Booth reminded himself that he had tried. He'd mustered the courage to tell her how he felt, and she didn't love him back. Or if she did, she wasn't ready for him. She'd probably never be ready. And so soon after having his heart crushed, it was a relief watching her go. It was a relief knowing he wouldn't have to struggle with seeing her every day, knowing she would never love him.

Then why was his face wet with salty tears of grief?

* * *

"So?" Dr. Jack Hodgins asked his wife, leading her into the apartment and throwing back the curtains to reveal the nighttime Paris skyline, complete with Eiffel Tower and everything. "What do you think, _ma ch__é__rie_?"

"Oh, don't call me that!" Angela squealed, throwing herself into Jack's arms, smiling broadly. "That reminds me too much of Caroline Julien, sweetie. And we're here to escape all that for a year, right?"

"Correct as usual," her husband grinned, kissing her soundly before showing Angela the rest of their extravagant Paris home.

* * *

As Camille Saroyan drove home, through the afternoon DC rush hour, she wondered just how long it would take the Jeffersonian to decide she was obsolete. The entire Medico-legal lab had been built around Temperance Brennan's successes. And without her, Cam knew she was just a coroner. A kick-ass coroner, make no mistake, but still someone they didn't need any more if their star team – Brennan, Booth, Hodgins, and Angela were all gone.

Oh, sure, they said they'd all be back in a year. But this was the end of an era. By this time next year, Michelle would be graduating and Cam would probably be working somewhere else. Maybe it was a good time to brush up her résumé and start dusting off all those old Justice Department contacts. Maybe the FBI could use a medical examiner? And if anyone had the chops to make it as a Federal forensic scientist, it was Dr. Camille Saroyan.

* * *

Daisy Wick watched the ground disappear (though it wasn't actually disappearing, she just couldn't see it anymore past the clouds) and tried not to cry. Just a few days ago, she'd been looking forward to getting married, starting a life with her Lancelot and making some of the most exciting finds in anthropological history. But now, without him supporting her, knowing Lance wouldn't wait for her, Daisy found it difficult to see the bright side of spending a year on one of the best career moves of her life.

And she was a bright-side kind of person.

* * *

When the pilot made his announcement, Dr. Temperence Brennan sighed and pushed the button to make her chair recline. This was going to be a long trip, and she found herself glad once again that Ms. Wick could not afford a first-class ticket like herself. It would be a quiet and restful flight, with plenty of time to catch up on the literature she would need to cite over and over again on this dig. No one would yammer on next to her, bugging her about this and that, just wanting to talk about nothing.

In fact, no one at all was seated next to her, and Bones thought it would be a relief. Instead, it kept bringing up memories of her aborted flight to China. Memories of Booth disobeying the flight attendants to come bother her, of them solving a crime together with almost nothing to go on, of him sitting in that chair next to her, making ridiculous noises.

He wouldn't stop her this time. Booth wasn't on the plane and he wouldn't keep her from another scientific discovery. In the five years they'd been working together, her publication rate had plummeted to only one or two major papers a year, where she was used to five or six. She wondered if her colleagues thought she was slipping.

Well, she would prove to everyone that she was still the scientist that commanded respect throughout the world. She would prove that she still had something to say about what it meant to be human.

Dr. Temperance Brennan would prove to everyone that she didn't need Special Agent Seeley Booth.

* * *

The patient made a few more notes in his book, cross-correlated a few more newspaper articles, and finally allowed himself to open his mouth in shock. Why hadn't anyone else seen this? How could the entire country be ignorant of this event going on under their noses (he was getting better at metaphor) when he'd found it in half a day, given an old stack of newspapers to archive for the hospital library?

Standing up and abandoning all but his notebook, which he clutched protectively to his chest in his gloved hands, the patient stood and approached the orderly standing guard. "Mr. White?" he asked the man, who had curiously dark skin for someone of that name.

"What is it Zack? Need another break?"

"I think …" he began, trying to meet the man's eyes and failing. He used to be able to do this. He used to be able to pass for almost normal most days. As long as he didn't have to open his mouth. "I would like to speak to Dr. Sweets, please."

"About your therapy?"

Zack thought about the question for a millisecond. He'd always been told that lying was one of the worst things you could do when engaging in social interactions. But a time or two, he'd seen Booth or Jack lie, and it appeared to be for social interaction's sake. To keep the peace, as it were. A lie, then, to make sure what needed to happen, happened. "Yes," the patient told Mr. White. "I have emotional issues, and I would like to speak to Dr. Sweets about them."

Nodding, the orderly led the patient from the library, towards the director's office. Pointing to a chair, he asked, "If I ask you to wait there, will you still be there in five minutes?"

"I'm very intelligent," the patient replied. "I can follow a simple direction."

Twenty minutes later, the patient had learned that anyone he cared to talk to had left the country, and everyone was planning to be gone for at least a year. If he was another person, the patient might have been offended that none of his people had mentioned to him that they were leaving. But he wasn't another person.

He was Dr. Zachary Uriah Addy, Ph.D., Ph.D., and he had to get out of here. Lives were on the line.

* * *

_A/N: Hey everyone!_

_This is my response to last night's season finale, picking up where the episode left off, and I just had to post it right away._

_Since it's just the prologue, this chapter is a little short and a little fragmented, but don't worry, things will get more narrative from here. The romantic relationships will be canon, so for those of you who were fans of "The Brothers in the House", no, there won't be any Booth slash in this fic. This is how I imagine the summer progressing, so it will be the same genera as the show, i.e. Mystery, Romance, Adventure, Humor, and so on and so forth. I'm hoping to finish before the show comes back on again in the fall and I get Jossed, again. _

_Thanks for reading, and please leave a review! I love any and all comments. Plus, my hit counter is broken again this week, so I won't know if anyone's reading unless I get reviews...  
_


	2. Surprise Appearances

_A/N: Wow, you guys! Thirty-four alerts, seven reviews, five favorites, and one community nod all in the first twelve hours! I am overwhelmed. As payment, I present to you a second chapter!_

* * *

**Redux**

Chapter 2 – Surprise Appearances

"I can't believe," Jack said as he waited for Angela to unlock the door to their apartment, "that I'd ever admit a movie was better when dubbed into French."

"And not just any movie," his wife pointed out, opening the door and flipping on the light.

"Die Hard!" Jack agreed, following her in with his hands on her hips. "One of the most American movies ever made, and it was better in French!"

Angela laughed, dropping her keys and purse on the table. "I'm just glad Bruce Willis had his shirt off the whole time."

"Hey!" Jack replied, reaching back to close the door behind him.

"Oh, relax, sweetie," she grinned, grabbing at the top button of his dress shirt. "You're just as hot as nineteen-eighties Bruce."

"Think so, do you?" he murmured, kissing her and pulling her hips closer. If there was anything he loved about Paris, it was how much Angela loved Paris. And Paris loved them right …

"Agh!" he yelped – not screamed, _yelped_ – startled by the face appearing out of the dark hallway beyond the living room.

"What?" Angela cried, turning around and jumping out of her skin with a tiny shriek when she saw the figure. "Zack?" she asked, her voice strangled and high. "Is that you?"

Stepping further into the light, both lovers saw that it _was_ Zack Addy, standing in their living room, looking chagrined, his gloved hands clutched at his sides. "Hello," he said simply, like he'd just dropped by for a visit and hadn't shown up completely unexpectedly.

"Zack, buddy!" Hodgins cried, stepping closer and shooting a worried glance back at his wife. "It's so good to see you!"

"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?" he asked, giving Jack a little smile, the one that said he wanted to smile, but couldn't quite make himself commit to it.

"_Yeeaah_," Jack nodded forcefully. "Yeah, what's going on? Why the impromptu trip to Paris?"

"Everyone left," Zack pointed out. "I needed to tell you something, but everyone left and there was no one to tell it to."

"Oh, my God, sweetie!" Angela sighed. "I'm so sorry. We forgot to tell you!"

Zack shrugged, his eyes concentrating on the empty dining room table. "It's fine. I know where everyone is now."

"Which leaves the question," Jack said, gently touching his friend's elbow, "why couldn't you just call, Zack?"

"I'm not very good with words," he confessed, pulling his notebook from a bag slung across his chest. "I'm even worse on the telephone without the facial expression clues I've learned to rely on. And," he opened the notebook to a specific page, handing it to Hodgins, "I wanted to show you this."

"What is it?" Jack asked, taking the book and holding it so Angela, standing next to him, could read it too. "A list of names, dates, and locations? What is this, Zack?"

Meeting Hodgins' eyes and making the man uneasy with the force of his stare, Zack replied, "Unsolved murders. Dozens of them. And no one else saw the pattern."

* * *

Please," Lance said, leaning heavily on the counter in front of him. "I've been awake for almost seventy-two hours. I just need help getting in touch with the archeological dig on the Maluku Islands."

"If this woman," the clerk at the embassy counter pointed at the picture Sweets had given her, "wanted you to contact her, why wouldn't she give you this information herself?"

"Well," he admitted with a sigh. "We sort of broke up, but I'm here to surprise her and apologize!"

The woman peered at Lance skeptically over her reading glasses. "You broke up?"

"It's not what it sounds like. She had to come here for her job, and I thought I could break things off between us, you know? Because I didn't think I could follow her. But I can! I'm Mr. Adventure!"

"Uh-huh," the woman muttered, like she had no idea what he was talking about.

"Please?" he tried again. "For love?"

Rolling her eyes and sighing, she picked up her phone and punched a button, saying, "Let me see what I can do..."

"Yes!" Lance cried, pulling his fists toward his body in a gesture of victory. "Thank you, Helen! Thank you!"

* * *

Two days later, Brennan looked up from her work under one of the canopies and watched a man who resembled Dr. Sweets run through the entrance of her camp, searching the faces around him desperately. "Daisy!" he bellowed, getting everyone's attention as he dropped his bags in a haphazard pile on the muddy ground. "Daisy Wick! Where are you?"

"Dr. Sweets!" Brennan called in surprise; it wasn't a man who _looked_ like her therapist. It actually _was_ him. She approached the man carefully, saying, "I thought you were to stay in the U.S. during this expedition. It's almost the only thing Ms. Wick has spoken about."

"I was!" Sweets cried and grabbed Bones' arm, a bright smile on his face. "But then I realized I just had to come! I couldn't give up on the love of my life because the circumstances were difficult."

"Lancelot!" Ms. Wick cried from one of the tents near the back of the camp, her voice so high-pitched that Brennan was surprised she could hear it, not possessing aural acuity akin to a canine's. "What are you doing here?"

"I was so stupid, Daisy!" he insisted, stooping to grasp the intern around her torso, picking her up and spinning both of them around several times. "I knew it as soon as your plane took off, and I've spent every waking moment since then trying to get to you."

"What are you saying?" Daisy asked, laughing as Sweets returned her to her feet.

"I'm saying let's get married! I don't care if it's here, or if it has to be a year or two from now! I can't live without you!"

"Lance?" Daisy smiled. "What about your job? Your career? Your dreams?"

Yes, exactly. That was the question Brennan had been waiting for. It had been perfectly reasonable, even admirable, for Sweets to stay in Washington where his career would thrive. FBI psychologists were not exactly in demand in a remote location such as this. How would he justify committing what amounted to career suicide?

"It's not as important as you are, Daisy!" Sweets insisted. "I would give up _ten years_ of my career to be with you. _You're_ the dream."

"Aww!" Ms. Wick squealed, kissing her fiancée soundly. "I'm so happy you're here!"

"Yes," Brennan broke in, feeling she had to say something before their public displays of affection became even more graphic. "It's very nice to see you Dr. Sweets. I'm sure your presence here won't be distracting at all."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Brennan," Sweets replied with a chuckle and a grin that said he was anything but sorry. "Don't worry. I'm still going to consult for the FBI on a case-by-case basis."

Daisy made a disappointed noise and pouted, "You're going back to the States?"

"No!" he exclaimed, still grinning as he pulled a silver case from among all the luggage he'd brought. Bones recognized it as similar to one of hers. "I've got a satellite transmitter for my laptop. As long as I've got some electricity and a good signal, I can talk to whoever I need to. Watch interrogations, observe patients, counsel agents, everything!"

"I see," Bones nodded, pleased that her educated guess about the contents of Sweets' case were correct. As she noticed the wide grins on his and Daisy's faces, somehow, she couldn't help but be infected by their enthusiasm. "Congratulations," she smiled, waving over some workers to help Sweets with his luggage. "I'll try to make sure you're welcomed here."

"Thanks, Dr. Brennan!" Sweets replied, excitedly grabbing up his share of the load. "I owe you big time!"

Daisy smiled at Bones too, before leading the way toward her quarters, and Bones missed Booth's voice in her ear, telling her she'd done a good thing.

No! She wasn't supposed to miss her life in Washington. It would still be there when she got back, even if things weren't starting out as expected. If Sweets could turn his life upside-down in the span of a week, how much more would change during a year? Bones couldn't count on anything, could she? Not even the person she wanted most to be there when she got back, because he had gone to one of the most dangerous places on Earth.

Because of her.

Unable to concentrate on extracting the remains she'd been working on, Bones told her assistant, "I need a break, Mr. Adams. I'll be back in thirty minutes."

"Of course, Dr. Brennan," the grad student replied, smiling up at her. "Yvette and I will still be here when you get back."

Huffing in annoyance, Bones told the man, "I don't like it when you name the remains, Mr. Adams. We must be as objective as possible when investigating such an important find."

"Right," the man nodded, looking down sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I forgot. It's all 'specimen 589' from here on out."

"Thank you," Bones replied, wishing she hadn't been so harsh with him. Well, Booth and Cam had taught her about conciliatory gestures, so Bones gave it a try. "Nice work cleaning and extracting the left tibia. You have excellent precision."

"Thanks, Dr. Brennan!" Adams called as she left the site.

Needing to get away from the others for a moment, Bones paced over to her cabin, which doubled as her office. It was more of a platform tent than a cabin, but it had a bed, rudimentary running water, and a desk. A single light bulb hung from the aluminum pole rafter, and an extension cord hung down next to that. It was good enough to plug in her own silver case, connecting via its miniature satellite dish to her resources at the Jeffersonian.

One of which was e-mail.

She knew it was stupid. She knew Booth wasn't expecting her to contact him at all during this year. Why else would he specify a time and place to meet so far in advance? But, it couldn't hurt, right? He might not even check his FBI email for months, if at all while he was away in Afghanistan. But Bones thought, _he might want to know_.

_Booth,_ she began.

_I don't know when you'll receive this missive, but something interesting happened today, and I thought you'd like to hear it. Just one week into our dig, Dr. Sweets arrived. He is planning to spend the rest of this year with Ms. Wick here in Indonesia. I found his presence here unexpected, to say the least. _

_I am relieved that he has not completely given up on his career, as he will still be consulting for the FBI by satellite. Though for the most part, he appears to be here because he "cannot live" without Ms. Wick, as if she were a basic nutrient, like caloric intake, or oxygen._

_I thought you might appreciate the comparison he made between romantic attachment and these basic life-giving molecules. I thought you might also appreciate the fact that I will pull several strings (metaphorically of course) to assure that Dr. Sweets is allowed to stay. _

_I find his actions very brave. He came to this foreign country unaware of where we were or if he would be welcomed. It must be either bravery or stupidity, and sometimes I have trouble telling the difference._

_I miss your help telling the difference._

_Sincerely,_

She started to write, _Bones_, but then deleted it. They weren't partners right now. Did that mean she couldn't keep using the nickname Booth had given her? She began writing, _Temperance Brennan_, but that was even worse.

Finally she signed it, _Bones_, and hit send.

* * *

It was late afternoon, almost time to go home for dinner, when Cam's cell phone rang. She picked it up without checking the caller ID, since she was busy proofreading her résumé before sending it to one of her friends in the Justice Department. Justin knew of an open Medical Examiner position in Chicago that seemed promising. There, she would lead the entire department, earn a nice pay bump, and really make a name for herself, aside from Brennan. Michelle wouldn't be happy about having to move for her senior year, but tough. Maybe it was time for her to see a different city, a different part of the country. Maybe it was time to get her away from that boyfriend of hers.

"Saroyan," she answered the phone, furrowing her brow at a particularly nasty typo. There's no way she had meant to write _that_!

"Cam!"

"Angela!" the coroner cried, pulling away from her computer screen at the surprise. "How's Paris? Eat any croissants for me?"

"I've eaten enough for the both of us," she laughed, and Cam noticed that the artist's voice was a little nervous. "My ass is gonna be so big by the time we get back…"

Cam chuckled, but had to ask, "What's wrong? Ange?"

"Um, well," the woman stalled.

"Is everyone okay? Is Hodgins okay?"

"No!" she cried. "I mean, he's fine. Nothing's _wrong,_ per se…"

Cam nodded to herself and leaned back in her chair. "So this is purely a social call?"

"Um," Angela said, and then the sounds coming over the phone devolved into murmurings and scraping sounds.

"Hey, Cam!"

"Hodgins," Saroyan said in her no-nonsense tone. "What's going on?"

"You'll never guess," the entomologist cried, his mood a lot better than Angela's had been, "who we ran into in Paris! In the middle of the night! In our house!"

"Um," Cam closed her eyes and shook her head. "I'm guessing _not_ the Pink Panther."

"Oooh," Hodgins crowed. "Close but no cigar, Dr. Saroyan."

"Who?"

"Our good old buddy, Zack!"

Cam gasped. She full-out, standing up suddenly, hand to her mouth, eyes wide, _gasped_. "How?" Swallowing and shoving her eyes closed again. "I mean, _when_? No! I mean _how_?"

"Apparently he heard everyone was out of town and decided to bust outta the joint yesterday. He says he '_forgot_' to call you."

"Damn straight, he forgot!" Cam cried. "Why would he leave? Why now?"

"He found a pattern in the last three years of newspaper articles," Hodgins said, apparently ignoring someone talking to him in the background. "I'm not sure of the details, and I'm not sure he is either, but he says it's a serial killer at work, and he can predict where his current burial site is."

"And we're sure the killer isn't–"

Cutting her off, Hodgins insisted, "We're _sure_. Zack just wants us to help. He wants me and Angela to use our expertise to help him find the site. I thought I'd call and run this past you before it goes any further."

"You're on a leave of absence, Hodgins," Cam pointed out. "You don't need me dictating your schedule anymore."

"We do if we're going to use Jeffersonian resources," Hodgins pointed out, and Cam could almost see the charming smile he only pulled out when he was trying to get something from her.

Dr. Saroyan sighed, letting her face fall into her free hand and thought about it.

"Cam?"

"I'm thinking," she snapped back. "Give me a few seconds."

"'kaaayy."

After a few breaths of '_oh my god'_ and '_aiding and abetting a fugitive'_ and '_Zack's never wrong_' Cam asked, "Where does he think the burial site is?"

"Toronto."

"Jack!" Saroyan cried. "We can't just go digging around in a foreign country because Zack sees a pattern!"

"I know that," Hodgins replied, his voice implying he was annoyed Cam could think otherwise of him. "I was just hoping you could get a hold of Sweets, so we can get Zack back where he belongs before too much time has passed. I keep calling, but he's not answering his phone."

"It's probably," Cam sighed, "because he's in Indonesia, chasing Daisy."

"He–" Hodgins chuckled. "He actually went through with it?"

"As far as I know."

"Damn."

Making a decision, Cam said, "I'll try to contact Dr. Brennan. She assured me she would have access to email at least some of the time every day. Maybe he found them at the site."

"Yeah," Hodgins agreed. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea."

"Give me your number there in Paris?" she asked, jotting it down when Hodgins spouted off a string of number. "I gotta tell you, Hodgins. I don't know how we could ever go tromping around outside Toronto looking for these bodies. I mean, if the authorities found them first, maybe we could offer our services. But without Brennan…"

"Yeah," Jack agreed sadly. "And without Booth to talk to the Mounties for us … Just, let me know when you hear back from Brennan. We're flying back to Washington tomorrow."

"Oh!" Cam cried. "But your vacation?"

"Hey, Paris will still be here in a few weeks. We'll be fine once we get Zack back to the hospital. Hopefully before they send the bounty hunters after him."

"I'll try to get to Sweets, or maybe Gordon Wyatt. Someone official to bring him in gently."

"Thanks, Cam," Hodgins sighed. "We'll see you tomorrow, probably?"

"Tomorrow," Cam agreed, hanging up and hitting 'save' on her résumé and closing the program. There were bigger issues to deal with at the moment.

* * *

It had already been a long few days by the time Booth made it to Kuwait, travel-weary and ready to sleep for about a week. Too bad his next transport left in the morning. All he wanted to do was fall into a bunk, preferably one that was horizontal, but he had promised to call Parker. It was the last time he'd have access to reliable communication for at least a few weeks, and he had to speak to his son at least once before then.

Sighing, Booth signed up for a phone and waited his turn patiently. There were a few computers for general use, so he figured, "What the hell," and decided to check his mail. He'd been worrying the whole trip that he'd forgotten something, some loose end at the Bureau. Checking now might give him some peace of mind.

As if something like that could be had out here in the desert.

"Shit," Booth whispered to himself, rubbing his eyes and wondering how the hell he could manage to sound enthusiastic for his son. No talk about how this might have been a mistake, no talk about how there were other people, better people, _younger _people who could do this job. No talk about the partner he used to have.

Oh, and speaking of … Bones sent him something? Probably pictures of how happy she was at the dig. Pictures of her and Daisy Wick making the world a better place one ancient skeleton at a time. Pictures of her moving on without him.

But as he read, Booth realized that there were no happy pictures. There weren't even many happy words. Only an almost overwhelming sense of loss. Booth knew not to read too much into her words. Without seeing her face, it was impossible to know what she meant by sending him this. Without hearing her voice, he'd never know if there was another meaning underneath her words. He'd never know if she was telling him she wanted to be brave, like Sweets.

Or if Bones wanted Booth to be the brave one.

Again.

* * *

_Keep those reviews coming! I need all the encouragement I can get to keep this one going at breakneck speed. :P _

_Thanks so much for reading!_


	3. What's Right

_A/N: A little heads up: updating twice in one day does not bump you to the top of the list. In case you were wondering. But today's a new day, and hopefully some of you are new readers who found my story today!_

_Enjoy!_

* * *

**Redux**

Chapter 3 – What's Right

When Bones received a reply from Booth the next day, while she was working at her computer over breakfast, it simply contained a phone number. Did he want her to call this number? Did she even have access to a phone?

But then, an email from Cam marked 'URGENT' caught her attention. Brennan opened the message and grew more and more concerned the more she read. They just couldn't leave her alone, could they? And Zack of all people? He should have known how important this trip was to her. He should have appreciated the implications of her research here on the Maluku Islands. She didn't care if a serial killer was on the loose.

She didn't!

Grumbling into her slap-dash coffee, Bones made her way to Daisy's half-a-cabin. "Hey!" she cried, trying to knock on the canvas wall and failing. "Hey, Dr. Sweets! I'd like to talk to you, please!"

"Dr. Brennan?" Sweets' voice wafted from the cabin, confused and disoriented. "Hang on a minute."

The sounds of two bodies shuffling around, getting dressed, escaped through the canvas next, punctuated by whispers and murmurs. Finally, Sweets stuck his head out, "Yes, Dr. Brennan?"

"I received an email from Dr. Saroyan this morning. She and Hodgins have been trying to contact you."

"Oh, man!" Sweets cried, shaking himself free of the damp canvas as he stepped out onto the ground. "They have? I didn't even check for messages when I got here."

"I believe," Bones pointed out, sipping her coffee again, "that you and Ms. Wick were too busy engaging in noisy intercourse to bother with work."

"You…?" Sweets frowned. "You heard that?"

"Booth would …" Bones started wondering if she would be showing too much of her inner conflict to Sweets if she continued. But, upon the severely curious look Sweets gave her, Bones decided not continuing would be worse. "Booth would say something about people in Antarctica, or a similarly remote climate, being able to hear you. But I suppose the Maluku Islands are remote. So maybe that hyperbole wouldn't be appropriate here."

"Uh-huh," Sweets grunted with a nod. "Say, do you know why the Jeffersonian people were trying to reach me? And I thought Hodgins and Angela would be in Paris by now."

"Apparently," Bones shrugged, replaying the email in her head, "Zack escaped. To Paris. Because none of us told him we were leaving the country. Is it standard protocol to tell ones previous employees that one is going away for extended amounts of time? Because I didn't think that it was…"

"Oh, God," Sweets muttered, a hand flying to fist in his hair, a gesture of distress Brennan guessed. "Zack is our _friend_, Dr. Brennan. It's usually good form to tell your friends about life-changing events such as leaving the country."

"But, Lance," Daisy broke in, stepping down from her cabin, "you didn't tell anyone you were coming here."

"I don't …" Dr. Sweets sighed, and Bones wondered why he looked so sad. "All the friends I _remembered _having were either out of the country, or notified by the FBI that I was coming here, Daisy. There's no one else. No family to inform."

"Oh, my poor Lancelot!" Daisy cried with a pout, hugging Sweets' side quickly. "I didn't mean to be so insensitive. I'm sorry."

"That's okay, Daisy," Sweets smiled. "All I need is here, with you."

Suddenly, Bones felt like she shouldn't be watching this conversation any more, as Sweets and Ms. Wick had taken over with their talk about feelings and friends. Bones hated these conversations. Half the time, without Booth there to translate, she couldn't really get a grasp of what was going on. No matter how hard she tried to learn from Booth, nothing was as good as having him there, always next to her.

Nothing.

Clearing her throat, Bones added, "Cam wants you to talk to the hospital. To let them know Zack is coming back peacefully."

"Yeah," Sweets nodded. "Of course! Is there a phone? Should I try video-conferencing with Cam? What?"

"It's yesterday afternoon there," Bones pointed out, doing the calculation in her head. "She should still be in the lab and be able to receive video."

"Right!" he nodded, leaping back into the cabin and grabbing his silver briefcase. "Now all I need is an outlet."

Sighing, Bones offered, "You can use my office, Dr. Sweets. I'll show you the set up."

"Thanks, Dr. Brennan," Sweets replied, kissing Daisy on the cheek as he passed her.

How could people get to be like Daisy and Sweets? They'd only known each other two years, and already Sweets was willing to travel across the country for her. Bones then realized that she had never known any man for that long, save her family and her coworkers. And Booth.

* * *

Booth was walking across the base in Afghanistan, on his way to meeting his first group of students, when his satellite phone rang. He still couldn't believe he'd wrangled the privilege during his brief stay in Kuwait. They must really need him for this mission, if his commanders were letting him get away with keeping a phone on him at all times.

"You go on ahead," he told the corporal leading him. "I have to take this. FBI, stuff, you know."

The corporal shook his head, "Orders are to escort you door to door, Sergeant Booth. You haven't yet been briefed on all the safety procedures."

Frowning, Booth muttered, "Fine," and answered. "Booth."

"Hello, Booth," a woman's garbled voice came over the line and Booth couldn't believe that she'd broken down and called him so quickly. Could she really miss him even half as much as he missed her? Her email seemed to suggest that she did. And now the phone call…

Eyeing the corporal listening to him, Booth steeled his resolve and replied carefully, "What can I do for you?"

"It's me," she replied, the connection clearing up, "Bones."

"I am aware," Booth said, wishing the soldier beside him would just leave him alone for two minutes. He would never find out what Bones had meant by her letter at this rate. "Thank you for returning my call. What's the situation there?"

"I _told_ you, Booth. Sweets came to Indonesia!" she cried, getting frustrated. "And you didn't call me, you left a very cryptic email and now Zack is in Paris!"

"He's _what_?" Booth exclaimed, not caring that he had an audience. "When? Why?"

"I don't know," Bones replied, her voice wavering in that way that said she was very upset and was trying to hide it. God, he wanted to do anything in his power to make that tone in her voice evaporate. "Sweets is talking to Cam about it now. It has something to do with everyone leaving the country without telling him. And a serial killer in Toronto."

"That's outside my jurisdiction," Booth replied, wondering if he could still say that. Sure, his position at the FBI was waiting for him when he got back, but technically, Booth didn't work for them anymore.

Bones sighed loud enough that he could hear her over the static and said, "I know Toronto is in Canada, Booth. I wasn't born last year."

Involuntarily chuckling at her, Booth corrected, "_Yesterday_. It goes 'I wasn't born _yesterday'_."

Then, instead of sighing past the static, Bones sobbed loud enough that Booth could hear her over the shaky connection.

Brow furrowing in concern, Booth turned his back on the corporal next to him, really wishing he could speak freely, and said, "What's the problem? How can I fix it?"

"This," Bones sounded like she was forcing out the words past her tears, "_opportunity_ was supposed to be about science, Booth. It wasn't supposed to be about interpersonal relationships! But I can't escape them, they followed me here, and now Sweets and Daisy are back together and I'm worried about Zack and I don't want to talk to Cam about it. And you're not here to tell me what to do! What should I do, Booth?"

"First thing," he choked out, trying not to be affected by his partner's outpouring of emotion. No way he could show up to the first day of class with tear-reddened eyes and hope to be taken seriously by any of the soldiers he was supposed to teac. "…is _calm down_. Everything's going to work out. I have to be somewhere right now, but I'll look into the situation later, alright?"

"But," Bones said, sighing like she did when she was trying to pull herself together, "what should I do _next_, Booth?"

"Try to find out more about Dr. Addy's Toronto theory. When I get a minute, I'll try to arrange another agent to work with Cam and Zack."

"No," Bones insisted. "We're _your_ people, Booth. I very much doubt that Zack will be willing to work with anyone else."

Booth huffed in annoyance. "I don't know what you think I can do about that now."

Sadly, she asked him, "I'm asking too much of you, aren't I?"

"Yes," he replied, wishing it weren't the truth, wishing that if he did something brave, like Sweets had, he could be sure she wouldn't reject him again. It was too much to ask him to be there for her half-way, just as a partner and a friend. Then again, he had dealt with that for longer than he cared to admit. "I'll see what I can do."

"When can I speak to you next, Booth?"

"When I know something," he replied, "I will call you. Is that acceptable?"

"Booth," Bones asked in her curious voice, "why aren't you speaking like yourself? You sound almost like me… You aren't alone are you?"

"Affirmative," he sighed, wishing he was alone, that he could coax her into saying everything that was on her mind. Wishing he could coax her into loving him.

"Oh," she sighed. "Thank you for taking my call, Booth. I shall continue my work here and wait for you to 'know something'."

"You're welcome," Booth replied, knowing that even if she had called in the middle of class, he would have taken her call. "Until then?"

"Until then," Bones agreed, hanging up and leaving just static on the line.

* * *

"No," Zack said unequivocally, watching both Sweets' and Dr. Saroyan's faces on the computer screen. "I will not consent to going back while this killer is loose. My knowledge of pattern recognition, applied engineering, and forensic anthropology makes me uniquely qualified to solve this case."

"Are you _trying _to get us to call the Paris police?" Hodgins asked, sitting beside him. "We can make you go back."

"You can try," Zack shrugged, looking at his friend without meeting Hodgins' eyes. "But, I am deceptively strong. And highly intelligent. I have only been captured when I consented to being captured."

"Zack," Dr. Saroyan said, blinking a few times, "you can be a very creepy guy."

"Yes. I have been told this about myself several times. Mostly by Agent Booth."

Dr. Saroyan hid a laugh behind her hand, while Dr. Sweets made a frustrated noise and asked, "What am I going to tell the hospital, Zack? That you're taking a _leave of absence_ from custody?"

"I'm not sure that's a real thing," he pointed out, looking up when Angela clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"It's not," the woman explained. "Sweets is just being sarcastic, Zack."

"Zack!" Dr. Brennan cried, taking the left-hand video panel over from Dr. Sweets. "I greatly admire your resolve. You _should_ be allowed to work this case, since you are the one who brought it to our attention. I talked to Booth, and he was difficult to understand–"

"Sweetie?" Angela broke in. "Have you been crying?"

"What? No," Brennan insisted, but now that Angela pointed it out, Zack noticed that his former mentor's eyes were reddened and swollen, both classical indications of emotional lacrimation. "I was trying to say that Booth said he would look into it. He wants to find us another FBI agent to work with."

Another agent? Zack didn't like that idea at all. "I can't trust anyone else," he insisted. "If Agent Booth isn't available, this case will have to wait until he is."

"Zack," Cam started softly. "Booth is in _Afghanistan_. It's going to be a long time before they let him leave."

"And if you're right about this killer," Sweets pointed out, taking the camera back from Brennan, "he's accelerating. He won't stop killing until someone catches him. Now, he might grow so unstable that the Canadian authorities will catch on, but if this pattern is as subtle as you claim, Zack…" the psychologist sighed. "I doubt anyone would notice. Please, let us work with someone else. Agent Perotta knows us, and she could help."

"Agent…" Zack asked, looking up at Angela. He wondered why he'd never noticed what a calming presence she had. Maybe his time in the hospital had made him more open to admitting that people had _presences_ and not just subconscious social effects on other people.

"Payton Perotta," Angela filled in. "She's good, Zack."

"She doesn't understand people like us, Zack," Brennan butted in. "Not like Booth does."

Off to his side, Angela shook her head and muttered, too quietly for the microphone to pick up, "Doesn't miss him, my ass."

Ignoring that cryptic comment, Zack told Cam, "If you can get Agent Booth on this case, I'll return to the hospital and work from there. Otherwise, you'll never see me again."

"Seriously, dude?" Hodgins asked, surprised. "Getting Booth back out before his term is up would be like performing a small miracle."

"I was sent home from Iraq before my term was completed," Zack pointed out, not understanding the problem.

"Zack," Cam said, that look on her face similar to the times she had delivered him bad news, "you were a consultant. Booth is a soldier."

"He's a _teacher_," Zack insisted. "That's what Hodgins told me."

"We're not getting anywhere with this," Sweets muttered. "If we can get Booth to tell you himself he's unable to leave his post, will you consider working with another agent?"

Zack thought over this possibility. The rational thing to do was to give in and work with another FBI agent. But other FBI agents were very strict about the rules, and Zack was breaking the rules by being absent from the hospital. Other FBI agents wouldn't give him the time he needed to solve this case before putting him back. And, Zack had been working on not being rational all the time. He'd been working on seeing the difference between right and wrong, no matter what logic said. And it was right to catch this serial killer. It was right to pursue this line of investigation to the full extent of his ability. And it was right to insist on the best FBI agent to help him. Because those victims did not deserve to die, and they deserved justice. That's what Brennan had taught him, despite her recent departure from the Medico-legal Lab.

"No," he said simply, closing the laptop and cutting off his colleagues' attempts at changing his mind. Now, he just had Hodgins and Angela to deal with.

"Zack!" Hodgins cried, following him into the kitchen. Zack was very thirsty. He wasn't used to speaking so much in such a short period of time anymore. "What are you doing?"

"Yeah, sweetie," Angela sighed. "Don't you think you're being a little unreasonable?"

"I think I'm doing what's right," he said softly, hating having to find the words to explain himself. "It may not be reasonable or logical, but it's right."

For a moment, Angela and Hodgins' expressions denoted complete surprise, and Zack was thankful for the silence.

* * *

_A/N: I'm trying to keep everyone in character. What do you think so far? Reviews are highly welcomed!_


	4. Meaning

**Redux**

Chapter 4 – Meaning

Bones tried to return to the dig site, but every time Mr. Adams or one of the other graduate students asked her a question, she had trouble answering. And it wasn't because she didn't know the answers. More often than not, she hadn't fully understood the question, since her mind was stuck in a disturbing loop of thoughts. Bones figured that if she could just tease out which thought came first, maybe she could start to put them in order.

She didn't used to have so many thoughts. Or, when she did, they had a clear cause. Her foster parents were mean to her, or one of her teachers misjudged her because she didn't speak very often. Or one of her professors made the mistake of thinking of her first as a woman and second as a scientist. Or cocky FBI agents said things she didn't understand and made her feel bad about not being very human. Or the same FBI agent managed to treat her with some respect on a case, and maybe it wasn't so bad working with him.

But now, there were thoughts about the dig, thoughts about whether Booth was okay or not in Afghanistan, thoughts about Zack and how proud of him she was, even though he'd escaped custody, thoughts about Sweets giving up his life for Daisy, and thoughts about Angela and Hodgins finding each other again.

Digs used to be so comforting. She would go, systematically remove evidence from the earth and be able to tell what happened thousands and millions of years ago to these early people, or people-like apes. It was logical, it made sense, and every skeleton was a new chance to discover something great about humanity.

No one really knew yet how to classify the division between people and non-people. Brennan favored a genus-wide cut off, where the genus _Homo_ was considered human, while older branches like _Australopithicus_ were considered bipedal apes. This classification used to give her comfort, but now it seemed wrong, to discount such highly sophisticated, upright-walking animals as inhuman when there was inhumanity all around her, every day.

And take this find in the Maluku Islands, possible evidence that _Homo floresiensis_ interbred with early _Homo sapiens_, and that the species had not gone extinct _before_ _neanderthalensis_ as previously assumed, but _after_. If these two groups of people recognized each other as the same species and interbred, who was she to say that the phenotypic skeletal differences between them meant _anything_?

Brennan used to consider herself an expert in one thing – forensic anthropology. She made no claims that, while she was a genius, she was an expert on much else. And that worked for her. She was fine being someone who specialized closely in this one area. And she liked being the best in the world.

Why wasn't it good enough anymore?

She had _changed_. She knew that now, and she knew it was all Booth's fault. He'd shown her everything she didn't know before about dealing with people, about finding out why they did those horrible things to other people, and about why they decided to devote their lives to one another. Before, she could observe a couple like Ms. Wick and Dr. Sweets and feel nothing about their attachment to each other. Now, she felt such crushing jealousy and sadness that she wondered how she ever though letting Booth change her was a desirable proposition. Before, she could see men without forming attachments or feeling self-conscious about how casually she treated them. Now, every man she met just wasn't good enough compared to him.

She'd lied when she told Booth she didn't know how to change. He'd showed her how to change, and Bones had ignored every one of his lessons when the moment was upon her. She knew she wasn't most people and that change came to her more difficult than most. She knew she didn't want to throw away what had seemed like a good thing for the very real possibility that any change between her and Booth would end badly.

It turned out, not being able or willing to change was even worse. And being thousands of miles away from him didn't lessen the blow of that realization.

Brennan didn't think she knew how to love other people. She knew she became _attached_ to people like her father, and her brother, and Angela. But, picking up the stack of dangerous wildlife cards Hodgins had made her, before dropping them back onto her desk, Bones remembered telling Jack that she loved him, too. And _meaning_ it. She loved people. And they loved her.

And it wasn't just a word, or an attachment caused by pleasing brain chemicals. Or if it was, that didn't change the fact that it was real and meaningful. It didn't change the fact that she and Booth had missed their moment. _Twice_. And it didn't change the fact that she missed him so much it hurt to breathe. Was this what Sweets was talking about? Was this what it felt like to be unable to live without someone? It seemed a scientific impossibility that one person could actually _die_ from being without another person. But it felt almost like dying.

And that feeling would never go away. Not unless she decided to be brave, like Sweets, like Booth. This was on her now. It was her turn to act, scientific find of a lifetime or no. Because without Booth there to give them meaning, the bones in the ground were just that. Bones. And she was just Dr. Temperance Brennan.

It meant nothing without him.

* * *

The second time Booth's phone rang, it was in the middle of the night, and he was glad he had private quarters, because that fucking thing rang _really loudly_. He didn't even know why he'd insisted on getting it. Taking this position was supposed to be about serving his country and moving forward. But he just couldn't let himself, could he? No, he kept letting the Jeffersonian pull him back with this craziness about Zack. And if it wasn't Zack it would have been something else. People were never going to stop killing each other.

And he was always going to want to know why.

"What?" he mumbled into the receiver. After a moment, when he didn't hear anything, Booth asked, "Parker, buddy? Is that you?" He'd given the number to his son just in case the boy needed to hear his voice sometime during the year. Parker was a brave kid, and he was used to only seeing his dad so often. But not seeing him for a year? Maybe it was Booth who couldn't deal with the separation.

"No," Bones said, clearing her throat. "No, Booth. It's me."

"Any more news about Zack's serial killer?" he asked, rubbing his eyes and sitting up in his bed. "The new one, I mean…"

"There was another…?" Bones asked, before breathing in quickly in recognition. "You meant Gormagon?"

"Yeah, Bones," he sighed. "That's what I meant. Listen, I'm only supposed to use this line for emergencies, you know. The more air-time we use, the longer anyone searching for signals has a chance to triangulate my position."

"I …" she said, startled. "I didn't think of that Booth, I'm sorry."

"Just," Booth sighed, "why are you calling?"

There was a long moment of silence. So long that Booth thought he'd lost the connection, "Bon–"

"I was wrong!" she blurted out, cutting him off, and it was so sudden that Booth thought maybe there was a long time delay in the signal. Or was it just her needing to say those three words so urgently, she just couldn't wait anymore? Bones thought she was wrong?

"About what?"

"About everything!" she insisted. "About you and about me. I was wrong, and I hate being wrong."

Bones was wrong? About … Holy Crap! Springing up out of his bunk, because he couldn't help it, Booth asked, "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"I'm saying I want to be brave," she practically yelled in his ear, like she always did when she was upset about something. "I want to be stupid, Booth! I want to change. I want to gamble. I want the bones I'm looking at to have a meaning, here and now! There's no meaning here, Booth! I can't find it anymore."

Sinking back onto his mattress, Booth couldn't do anything but laugh. It started out slow, just a chuckle, that little bit of emotion escaping, hitching in his voice-box and making a sound. But from there, the emotion grew, the relief and the giddiness and the sorrow and regret all rolled into one choking emotion and the only way it wanted to escape was through rolling, gut clenching, tears streaming, laughter.

"Booth?" Bones asked, her voice small and confused in the speaker held tightly to his ear. "Are you … You don't … I'm too late, aren't I? You moved on. I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry, Bones," he laughed, giggling by this point. "I don't mean to laugh. I just …" he took a deep breath and let it out, "Hooo!"

"Well, I'm sorry I bothered –"

"No!" he cried, shocked out of his fit. "Bones! Don't go!"

"You'd like to laugh at me further?"

"No!" Booth insisted, wiping the tears from his eyes. "I'm just overwhelmed. I'm overjoyed, Bones, really. But you have some of the lousiest timing!"

"I realize this Booth. But I've made a decision."

"Oh?" he asked, rubbing the muscles of his ribs, sore from his bout of laughter.

"I'm leaving Indonesia. I will no longer run the Maluku dig, but consult from the Jeffersonian. Ms. Wick will be my liaison."

"Jesus Christ, Bones," Booth swore, letting his head fall into his hands. "You couldn't have made this decision two weeks ago?"

"No," she replied simply. Another stretch of silence lingered between them, and Booth wondered if it would always be like this now. Now that he knew. He'd forever be coaxing her into saying more, wouldn't he? Booth found that he didn't mind.

"Okay, I'll bite," he sighed softly. "Why couldn't you have made this decision two weeks ago?"

"Because it took coming here and seeing Dr. Sweets risk everything for Ms. Wick to make me realize how much you gambled that night. I realize that you did not travel halfway around the world, but the comparison is valid, is it not?"

"It is," Booth agreed, surprised that she would have made that connection. She had learned something from him, hadn't she? "It definitely is."

"I'm sure there are other reasons why I've made this decision now," she said, "but I do not fully understand them. I will speak with Sweets before I leave to see if he has further insight."

"Well that's all well and good, Bones. But I'm kinda stuck here for another, oh, three hundred and fifty days. Give or take."

"I know. And I will try to see the meaning in my work at the Jeffersonian as you would see it, until you get back."

"Great," Booth agreed, wondering where that idea had come from. Sure, he'd talked about their work in Washington having meaning, he'd tried to use that to convince her to stay. And now, she brought it up? "That's great, Bones."

"We should hang up now," his partner said. "I would not want to endanger your mission any further."

"Thank you, Bones," Booth said, softly and evenly. "Thank you. I'll call you again when it's safe."

"I look forward to that, Booth."

"Later, Bones."

Cutting the connection with the press of a button, Seeley Booth briefly wondered if his St. Christopher's medal only gave him good luck when he was more than three thousand miles from home. If so, maybe he needed it re-blessed or something. Would there be an army chaplain in the base? Funny how he hadn't thought to check until just now.

* * *

When Angela woke up, the bed beside her was empty and so was the bathroom adjoining the bedroom. It felt ominous somehow, like Jack had skipped off without her. Or maybe, that he'd been taken somewhere, by spies or the government!

Oh, God. Married to Jack Hodgins for a little under a month and already she was on board with the crazy conspiracy theories.

Angela turned over, and saw that it was morning, if the bright light pouring in through the gauze curtains over balcony doors was any indication. It was morning and the bed was empty, but the apartment was as silent as Limbo on the weekend. Man, she'd been working at that place too long. A year off would do her good, if she could ever get that year off to _start_ without crazy ex-coworkers showing up and pulling her husband into God-knows-what investigations.

Don't get Angela wrong. She loved Zack. She loved the way he over-pronounced some words and not others. She loved the way that he made her feel all maternal. She loved that he had a goofy smile hidden under all that knowledge. She loved that he could just waltz out of a secure hospital – which sort of worried her about the hospital. But she hated how single-minded he could be about his hypotheses.

He had next to nothing as evidence that everyone he'd ever met should turn their lives upside-down investigating a case that didn't even exist yet. And he'd gotten Jack hooked into it, no sweat.

Knowing that boys would be boys and she just had to let this thing run its course, no matter how she felt about it, Angela pulled on a robe and went to go check out the rest of the apartment. What she found was unexpected, but not entirely surprising.

Jack Hodgins sat at the kitchen table, a cold mug of coffee in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

"What does it say?" Angela asked gently, smiling softly when Jack started in surprise.

Her husband cleared his throat, let go of his coffee, and smoothed the paper out in front of him. "It says, 'I had to leave. I am still working on the case. I will be in touch. Zack.'"

"I'm sorry, sweetie," the artist murmured, joining Jack at the table and squeezing one of his hands. "I know you wanted to bring him home."

"He didn't trust us," Hodgins concluded, picking up the note and waving it at Angela in emphasis. "He didn't trust us not to turn him in."

"Well, after that whole stink you made about calling the Paris cops, can you really blame him?"

Hodgins sighed. "I thought he knew me better than that. I was only bluffing!"

"Well, look," Angela said, pointing to the note, knowing better than to try to take it from him, "he said he'll be in touch. Why don't we just trust that he'll contact us sooner rather than later?"

"He is a pretty reliable guy," Jack shrugged, dropping the note like his fingers couldn't remember how to hold it any more. "You're right, Ange."

"I know," she smirked, leaning in for a short kiss. "Do you still want to go back to DC today?"

Jack blinked slowly a few times, long lashes fluttering over bright blue eyes. "Yeah," he nodded. "Paris can wait, right?"

"As long as it doesn't wait forever," Angela laughed. "Yeah, sweetie. It can wait."

* * *

By the time he got to the train station, Zack Addy had blonde hair and eyebrows, sunglasses, enough luggage to pass as your average traveler, enough cash to last him for a few weeks, and was named Henrick Jacobson, of Oslo, Norway. He kept his head down, offered his ticket when asked, and passed through scores upon scores of fellow travelers and no one noticed him. Zack had always been good at making sure no one noticed him.

Zack boarded the train heading for Istanbul, found his seat, stowed his luggage and pulled out a book entitled, "Learn Turkish Now!" Zack was already fluent in Turkish and twelve other languages that he'd mastered during his time in the hospital. The book was just for show.

* * *

_A/N: I've been managing to post once a day, but who knows how long that will hold out. _

_For now, I just want to thank everyone for reading and for all the reviews, favorites, and alerts. I'm overwhelmed by the response to this story, and that makes me really excited to keep writing._

_Until next chapter!  
_


	5. No Moment

_A/N: It has been a few days since I posted, but real life intervened, of course. Hope you enjoy this newest chapter and thanks to all of you who reviewed, put this on story alert, or checked the 'favorite' box. I appreciate all of it!_

* * *

**Redux**

Chapter 5 – No Moment

Bones opened with, "There _is_ no moment to miss," as she approached Lance Sweets, making him look up from his computer screen. Since speaking with Booth and Brennan a few months ago, he'd been revising his book, trying to figure out how to make sense of it now that the original was based on a false premise. It might take some rearranging, but hey, he had a whole year to kill. Right?

"What was that, Dr. Brennan?" he asked, wanting to make sure he'd heard her correctly. Sweets had heard that some natural poisons were slow-acting, first affecting delicate systems like eardrums and hair follicles. He must have been bitten by something that used this kind of poison, because there was no way Dr. Brennan said what he thought she said.

"There is no singular moment, Sweets," she repeated, sitting on a stool opposite the table from him. "I reject your hypothesis on the matter and submit my own: People form attachments because it is emotionally favorable, not because some mythical moment has occurred. Look at Angela and Hodgins: they first tried to get married several years ago, and it finally happened this year. They found their way back together, just as you and Daisy did, even though she was very hurt by your initial refusal to come here. Therefore, there is no moment to miss."

"What brought this on, Dr. Brennan? I thought you were leaving today?"

"I spoke with Booth this morning."

"You can do that?" Sweets asked, confused. "I thought he was in Afghanistan?"

"He is," she replied. "But I spoke to him nonetheless."

"Would you like to tell me what you spoke to him about?" Lance set his computer aside, giving Brennan his full attention.

Simply, Brennan replied, "Yes I would."

Sweets waited a moment for her to continue, but when she didn't he prompted, "And?"

"First I have to tell you about two months ago," she said, keeping her eyes with his as if to read his soul with those intense eyes of hers. Man, Sweets hated it when she stared so intensely, but he knew she did it because she felt threatened or scared. It was her subconscious defense mechanism, to make other people uncomfortable so they didn't challenge her. And it worked, more often than Sweets would like to admit.

Fighting to keep his eyes with hers, he nodded, "Okay?"

"After we told you about our first case," she began, finally blinking and looking away, "Booth told me …" Sweets watched her sigh, tears welling up at the corners of her eyes. "Booth told me he knew. He knew I was the one for him. And then he kissed me."

Ah. He'd been waiting for her to tell him about something like this. "I'm guessing you didn't react very well."

"What?" Brennan asked him, surprised. "How did you come to that conclusion?"

"Dr. Brennan! It was less than two weeks later that Booth started seeing Catherine. The only reason he might have done that, instead of waiting for you like he had been for the past three years, was if you gave him a flat-out, 'No.'" When Brennan's face flinched, ever so slightly, Sweets knew he was right. "It was one of the reasons you wanted to come here, wasn't it?" he guessed.

"I didn't think so at the time, Sweets," she sighed. "But now I know that I hated seeing him so sad every day. It didn't occur to me that the situation would be so easy to rectify."

"What?" Sweets asked, feeling his face crunch up in concern and tenuous hope. "What do you mean? Have you already rectified the situation?"

"Well, not completely. Booth is still stationed in Afghanistan. But I realized some things about myself and I shared those things with him."

"What things?" Sweets asked desperately, scooting to the edge of his stool. How long had he been waiting for something like this to happen? How long had he been watching and hoping one or both of them would make a move to break the stalemate between them?

"I have changed. I am no longer just a scientist, Sweets," she confessed. "I know, I'm a very successful novelist as well. But I'm a human being. Booth taught me that."

"You don't think you were a human being before?"

"Not a very good one," she chuckled, wiping a few tears away from her eye and flinging them away. "Not compared to Booth. Not compared to Angela and Cam and Hodgins. Not compared to you, Sweets."

"Wait, what?"

"It was you coming here that made me change my mind."

Overwhelmed, Sweets sat back in his chair. "I did that? I changed _your_ _mind_ about wanting to be 'more human'?"

"No, don't be ridiculous," she dismissed, and Sweets found himself relieved that his assumptions of Brennan weren't as far off as he thought they might have been the moment before. "You changed my mind about giving Booth a chance, as more than a partner and friend."

Lance felt his mouth drop open in surprise, and there was nothing he could do about it. He wanted to ask her a million questions, but he couldn't figure out where to start. Luckily he didn't have to, because his computer beeped and Cam's voice broadcast into the room.

"Dr. Sweets? Are you there?"

Turning the computer back around, Lance answered, "Yeah. Yes, I'm here. Dr. Brennan is with me."

"So, there's been a little wrinkle in the 'bring Zack back to the hospital' plan…"

"What is it?" Brennan asked forcefully, leaping up to stand behind Sweets so she could see the screen as well.

"He left Hodgins' and Angela's apartment in the middle of the night. And apparently he left a note."

"What did it say?" Lance asked. Even short notes could be indicative of a person's state of mind, especially of whether he intended on returning or not.

"Just that he's still on the case and he'd be in touch, that sort of thing. Angela and Hodgins are flying into DC right now, since there's really no point trying to find him. We've agreed to work on this case in the hopes that it will lead us to wherever Zack's run off to now."

"I leave the camp today, Dr. Saroyan," Brennan told her. "I will be there in three days."

"Wait, what?" Cam asked. "You'll be here, in Washington?"

Looking to Sweets in confusion, Brennan asked him, "Isn't that what I said?"

"It is," Lance replied, still trying to catch up to her. "But Cam is surprised that you're leaving Indonesia. You didn't tell her you were returning to the Jeffersonian, did you?"

"What about Maluku?" Cam asked. "I thought this was your dream find."

Brennan nodded. "You are correct. However, I find that life at the dig site, away from home, no longer agrees with me. I shall serve a smaller role in this operation, consulting from the United States."

"I didn't peg you as someone who would get homesick," Cam said, peering through the screen, like she was trying to make sure it was Brennan and not an imposter.

"Neither did I," the anthropologist replied softly, and Lance felt a sharp pain of sympathy for her.

Clearing his throat to dispel the moment, Sweets said, "I'll help with the case as best I can from here, Dr. Saroyan."

"The connection here is unstable, Dr. Sweets," Bones told him. "This is the first transmission that has gone through in nearly five hours. What if we need your help and we can't contact you?"

Sweets sighed and shrugged. "I belong here, with Daisy, Dr. Brennan. If you'd like, I can recommend several very skilled FBI psychologists that can help you."

"But none of them," Brennan pointed out, "have the same knowledge of Zack's mental condition as you do. And your help has been invaluable in previous cases where we have sought serial killers. You have to come!"

"I'd love to work this case," Sweets said, letting his volume raise to match hers, "but I made a _choice_, Dr. Brennan. You can't get me to change my mind on this."

Brennan stared at him for just a moment before offering, "I will pay all your travel expenses to Washington and back here. If we have made no progress finding either Zack or the serial killer within a week, I will send you back."

For the second time in five minutes, Lance felt his jaw drop open in shock. "I … Um," he tried to say, searching through Brennan's words for something to latch onto first. "I need to talk to Daisy."

"Fine," Brennan nodded. "But I leave in two hours. You must have made your decision by then."

Lance knew Dr. Brennan was a decisive person. It was one of her most obvious traits. But he felt odd being the subject of her decision. He wanted to do the right thing and make the right decision and he hadn't been this nervous since he'd asked Brennan and Agent Booth if he could observe them for his book. His completely worthless book, at this point, if his earlier discussion with her reflected what was really going on. He'd reserve judgment on that front until he got in contact with Booth to hear his side of the story.

In the meantime, he had a fiancée to talk to. So, Lance stood up, leaving Dr. Brennan to talk to Dr. Saroyan about whatever forensic scientists talk about, and went to find Daisy.

As usual, she was elbow-deep in Maluku Island mud and looking like she was loving the hell out of every second of it. The sight made him smile; she was always so beautiful when she was happy. He didn't want to disturb her, but Brennan had given him a deadline, so he called, "Daisy? May I speak with you for a moment?"

"Huh?" she said, pulling her head out of a square section of dirt she was clearing away. "What did you say, Lancelot?"

"May I speak with you? Please?"

So, they walked around the camp and Sweets told his fiancée about Dr. Brennan's offer. When he was done, he said, "I decided to be with you Daisy. If you want me to stay here, I will. I know it's unfair of me, but I need you to make this decision. Do I go with Dr. Brennan or not?"

The woman looked up at him, that furrowed-brow of concentration drawing his eye as she said, "And in any case, you'll be back soon?"

Nodding, Sweets said, "I promise. And if we're not done with the case within three weeks, I'm just going to say, 'screw it,' and come back anyway. Is that acceptable?"

"Then I want you to go, Lancelot," she smiled, about to throw her arms around his neck until she realized how covered in dirt they were. "As long as we get married as soon as you get back."

Heart overflowing, Sweets laughed and grabbed Daisy, regardless of the mud, squeezing her tight and kissing her fervently. "It's a deal!"

* * *

In a dingy Turkish hotel room, the former patient opened a freshly-bought trimmer, plugged it in, and proceeded to give himself a short buzz cut, tendrils of bleached hair falling all around him. Then, he showered, donned a stolen uniform and a counterfeit pair of dog tags, and gathered everything else together. All the evidence of his former identity he packaged into an innocuous looking suitcase, while everything else went into a standard-issue duffel bag, stenciled with his new name.

George Stolowski from Gary, Indiana. George was a demolitions expert returning to limited duty after an unfortunate training accident that explained the gloves he always wore. George hated the fact that the government wanted to send him home for good. He wanted to serve his country, be "in the thick of things", and return to his work, despite medical advice. All George's papers were in order, all the army's records had been altered to back up George's story, and all that was left to do was show up for transport bright and early in the morning.

* * *

Freshly jet-lagged from their mini-honeymoon in Paris, Jack Hodgins and Angela Montenegro returned to the Jeffersonian on a Thursday morning, just under two weeks since they'd been there last. "Home sweet home," Jack chuckled, walking hand-in-hand with his wife. "Think Cam's here yet?"

"I am," the coroner called from her office and Jack found it funny there were so few people around that she'd been able to hear him from in there. "And I need your help!"

"What is it, Cam?" Angela asked, leading the way into the office. There, Dr. Saroyan sat behind her computer screen, staring at it intently, and judging by the five spent coffee cups littered around her desk, she'd been staring for awhile.

Concerned, Jack asked, "What are you looking at? Porn?" Turning to Angela, he chuckled, "I bet it's porn."

"Zack's list," Cam replied, ignoring his joke entirely and barely even looking up to greet them. "I know there's a pattern here. I know Zack saw it, but I just can't get it, you guys."

"Don't worry about it, sweetie," Angela said, crouching down by Cam's chair and laying a concerned hand on her arm. "I'll take over for now, okay? Why don't you go try to get some sleep?"

Cam closed her eyes and nodded. "Thank you," she sighed. "I just have this feeling that if we can't crack this case soon, Zack is going to do something stupid and get himself hurt."

"We've got it, Cam," Jack assured her, though he felt about as tired as she looked. "We're all worried about Zack, you know."

"Why couldn't he just stay in the hospital? Why didn't he call me first?" Dr. Saroyan asked, meeting first Angela's eyes, then Jack's. "Why didn't he trust me?"

"Hey," Jack said sympathetically, "he didn't trust us either, Cam. And who knows what really goes on in that weird brain of his?" He sighed, "I had a feeling he was getting too bored in there."

"When did you see him last?" Angela asked her husband.

Ashamed, Jack replied, "Almost three months ago, Ange! I can't believe I'm such a bad friend. I hardly ever go see him, and then when he shows up in Paris, all I can think about is getting him back in that hospital. I suck."

"We all suck," Cam declared, tapping her desk in frustration.

"At least _I_," Angela said, standing up and heading from the office, "have a plan."

Many hours and many cups of coffee later, Cam had gone home and Angela had stats on all the people on Zack's list: name, place of birth, date of birth, date of disappearance, place of disappearance, and everything else that could be scrounged from the national databases.

"Of all the missing people on this list, only two have ever been found," Angela told her husband. "A little boy named Kevin and an unrelated middle-aged woman named Rose. Their grave was unearthed at a national park near a historical marker. It was a fluke, because the cadaver dogs were actually looking for a missing hiker."

"Alright," Jack replied, rubbing his eyes and taking another look at the list. "So what connects these two people to the rest of the list?"

"I … don't know," Angela said. "But we should ask Cam if there's any way she can get the coroner's reports on these two. Their murders were never solved, so it should be pretty easy to start looking into it. Of course it would be easier if…"

"If we had Booth," Jack finished, smiling sadly when Angela nodded at him.

The artist stared at her big display, and Jack wondered if maybe she was trying to see something visual in the data, some pattern that didn't have to do with numbers and dates and names. Hell, at this point anything would help.

To that end, he asked, "If we take the list at a whole, how many different types of people are there?"

"Well," Angela replied, more sure of herself now that he'd given her a place to start, "we've got male and female. Old and young. Well, that's weird…"

"What?" Jack asked, a tiny glimmer of hope bubbling up in his chest. It wasn't 'eureka', but he'd take it.

"If I sort the records by age, all the youngest victims are male, as are the oldest. See? Kevin, Joshua, Norman, Bill…"

"Do you have ethnicities?"

"Mostly Caucasian or mixed, a few Persian or Hindi," she said. "Light skin, dark hair, as far as I can tell."

"Well, I'm sure Sweets will have more to say about that when he gets back," Hodgins noted, "but it seems important to me. Like, there's four groups right? The very young boys, the old men, the adolescent girls–"

"And the middle-aged women," Angela cried, smiling as she pressed some buttons to make the list rearrange on the display.

"Hmm," Jack said, eyes roaming over the board as he thought. He could do this. It was just data analysis, even if it had nothing to do with bugs or plants or rocks. Jack Hodgins was an expert at getting what he needed to out of data. The problem here was, "I don't think we have all the data, Angela. I mean, Zack made this list while he was in the hospital, right?" When his wife nodded, Jack continued, "I think we should search through all the unsolved missing persons cases for people matching these four descriptions."

"We're going to come up with more hits than we know what to do with, Jack," Angela pointed out. Rearranging the names again, she took a sharp breath and said, "But look at this. The last eight victims by date of disappearance."

Angela let him look over the names, the birthdates, the dates of disappearance, for a minute, waiting for him to see it. What was it that she saw, damn it? He could do this. He could – "Oh my god! It's a cycle! First the teenage girl, then the old man, the middle-aged woman, and finally the young boy. Do you think this is just a fluke?"

"No," Angela replied. "I think this has been this guy's cycle since he started. The first disappearance Zack gave us was thirteen years ago. I'm going to program the search to follow this pattern back as far as it can go."

"We'll still have tons of false positives, won't we?" Jack asked.

Angela shrugged with a smile, "Sure, babe. But it's a start."

"It's a start," Jack agreed, watching as Angela sat down at her computer and started typing like crazy. He was still having a hard time believing that things between them had fallen back together. Some days it felt like he was dreaming, to think that Angela had agreed to be his wife, to think that they were going to spend the rest of their lives together, to think that she was well and truly his family. Other days, he felt like the time they'd spent apart had been the dream, that it couldn't have happened. Not when they were just as close as the first time they'd decided to get married, if not closer.

It had been a nonsensical, stupid, _necessary,_ nightmare of a dream and it had lasted for almost two years. Two years they could have been happy, if only they could have gotten over themselves sooner. At least Jack had been right in thinking all this time that he and Angela weren't over. Despite the fact that she dated other people, seriously at times, he hadn't given up on the idea that she was the one for him.

If it hadn't worked out, he would have felt stupid and insane. But it had. Angela had found her way back to him. The nightmare was over, and their life together was just beginning.

Sighing, Jack repeated, "It's a start."

* * *

_Don't forget to review, if you please! :)_


	6. Reunion

**Redux**

Chapter 6 – Reunion

Bones and Dr. Sweets arrived at the Jeffersonian to find Cam gone, even though it was eleven in the morning, and both Angela and Hodgins still slept. They were curled up together on the floor of her office, Angela's bright display still showing groupings of names and dates, lighting up their slack faces. Beside Bones, Sweets murmured, "Aw!" at the sight of the two newlyweds, and Bones wondered if he was anticipating a time when he and Daisy would sleep somewhere exceedingly uncomfortable. Bones didn't see the appeal.

Though she thought it might be best to let them sleep, seeing as they had obviously been working non-stop for some time, Bones couldn't help but let her curiosity win out. She cleared her throat loudly, apologizing when Angela sat up with a start, banging her arm against the leg of her desk. "Sorry, Angela. I didn't mean to frighten you."

Angela gave her friend a look and Bones wasn't quite sure what it meant. It could have been anger or annoyance, but it also could have been disbelief. Then, the expression dissolved away into one Bones recognized – a bright grin. "Sweetie!" Angela called, smacking Hodgins' arm to wake him. "You're back!"

The artist stood, gleefully hugging Bones and then Sweets, and the anthropologist smiled at the way Sweets blushed. Blushing was usually an indicator of an emotional stressor such as embarrassment or sexual attraction. Bones decided that since Sweets had just moved halfway around the world for a woman who was not Angela, his blush was most likely due to embarrassment at the expressiveness of Angela's greetings.

Bones could sympathize. It took her a long time to get used to the fact that Angela was a "touchy-feely" kind of person. Ordinarily, Bones did not appreciate being touched by people, even friends, but something about Angela made those anxieties disappear. After she had gotten used to the artist, of course. And that was another thing that had been missing from Indonesia. There was no one to give her a hug just because they hadn't seen her since the day before. Angela's hugs weren't exactly the 'man-hugs' her partner would give her when things went particularly wrong, but they were nice nonetheless. Maybe she _could_ get along without Booth until he came home, now that Angela was here.

"Hello, Angela," Bones chuckled. "Hello, Dr. Hodgins."

"Didn't expect to see us so soon, did ya, Brennan?" the entomologist said, standing up with a yawn. "And Sweets," he said, shaking the psychologist's hand, "just couldn't stay away, could you?"

"I'm just letting you all know right now," Sweets said with a determined look on his face, "that I'm not back for good. After this case, I'm going back to Indonesia, and you'll have to find yourself someone else to do all the psychology for you guys."

"Noted, Dr. Sweets," a voice said from the doorway, and turning around, Bones saw a very haggard-looking Dr. Saroyan standing there.

"Cam," she nodded, a smile springing to her face, though she couldn't tell you why. "It's nice to see you."

"You, too," the coroner said, returning the smile. Then, she caught Angela's attention and asked, "What was this big break-through you left me a message about? At five o' clock in the morning? Before I'd even gotten home…?"

"Well," Angela said, brushing her hair back and tying it at the nape of her neck, "I'm glad you're all here, because I was _not_ looking forward to explaining this multiple times."

"Any word yet on Zack?" Bones couldn't help but ask. She was more than worried about her former assistant, wondering where on earth he could have gone.

"Nothing," Dr. Hodgins replied, shaking his head. "I've asked around some, and I have some more phone numbers to call, but no one really knows anything. He doesn't have any credit cards or a cell phone and there hasn't been any money taken out of his bank accounts, so my guy over in France says there's no way they can find him. Not if he doesn't want to be found."

"I see," Bones nodded, sinking down into Angela's desk chair. It had been a long few days, and even though she was home, Booth wasn't, and no one knew where Zack had gone.

Embroiled in these thoughts, Bones didn't notice anyone was approaching until he said, "Good morning!" It was Deputy Director Hacker of the FBI. What was he doing here? Did he hear that Temperance was back in town and still want to attempt to have sex with her? Had someone on the team requested his help? Who could it have been? "How are all my favorite Jeffersonians doing today?"

Wincing at his loud tone, Bones said, "Not _all_ your favorites, right? Booth isn't here."

Hacker caught everyone's eyes but hers as he chuckled nervously. "Of course, Dr. Brennan. But don't worry, Booth is one of my favorite former FBI agents!"

After a short silence, in which everyone around Bones looked uncomfortable, Cam said brightly, "May I ask you why you're here, Mr. Deputy Director?"

"Oh, please," he smiled at the woman, "call me Hacker, I insist." After her nod, Andrew continued, "I am here at the request of the aforementioned Agent Booth, to help get this new investigation off the ground."

"No offense, sir," Dr. Sweets spoke up, "but isn't this a task you would normally assign to a subordinate?"

"Booth called you?" Bones asked, unsure why she felt so put-out. She knew she didn't want Andrew there in the middle of the investigation. She wanted Booth back, her partner as always. Only now, it would be better between them – more complicated, to be sure, but better. And somehow, she didn't think that Booth _would_ have called Hacker. To test that hypothesis, she removed her cell phone from her pocket and dialed.

"Who are you calling, Dr. Brennan?" Cam asked. "I thought we'd get started on this whole serial-killer thing?" Unwilling to let her conversation be disturbed, because the static would probably be horrendous anyway, Bones stepped out into the hallway, waiting breathlessly.

* * *

Sergeant Major Seeley Booth had been in his quarters for about an hour after dinner and evening briefings the next time his phone rang. It was insane how he'd been living from phone call to phone call. And this was only the third one. He'd come to Afghanistan to make a difference, to pass on what he knew and get back home unscathed. But now, preoccupied with Bones and her damn epiphany, his mind hadn't been on the job. He'd been coasting through his days half-assed, talking himself out of calling her every chance he got. What usually did it for him were all the lives that could be lost here in the base if he made too many calls too frequently.

He didn't feel like himself. He didn't feel like much of anything, except when the phone rang – and it wasn't his fault if she initiated the call, now was it? Only then would his heart race like it never did, even during particularly intense training scenarios. His hands would sweat and he felt about fourteen, reaching for the phone and daring himself to let it ring just once more before he picked up, so she wouldn't know how desperate he as to talk to her.

Who was he kidding? This was Bones. She wouldn't read anything into it if he picked up before the first ring had even finished.

"Booth," he answered, just in case it was the FBI calling him back about certain requests he'd made in the last week.

"It's me," Bones said, her low but feminine voice tickling his ear and making the spit gland in his jaw tingle almost painfully, anxious to kiss her. "Why did you send Hacker here?"

"Deputy Director Hacker?" he asked, all thoughts of wayward spit glands lost under this new concern. "I told him to send _somebody_, not _himself_!"

On the other end of the line, Bones sighed, "Oh, good. For a moment, I thought … well, I don't know what I thought, but it made me angry."

"Really?" Booth asked, smiling. She was angry because if he actually _had_ sent Bones' former romantic interest to her in his stead, that would be like begging her to move on. And apparently, she didn't want to move on anymore than he did. That's what she had said during their last conversation, and here he was, finally believing it with his whole heart.

"Oh, this was a stupid reason to call you, wasn't it?" she asked with a huff and Booth could almost see that frustrated wrinkle of her brow.

"I'm glad you called," he replied, hoping the tone in his voice would help calm her down. "I'm glad you checked with me instead of assuming something," he chuckled, knowing that as much as Bones hated assuming facts not in evidence, she did it way too often when trying to predict what other people were thinking.

"Okay, then we're in agreement?"

Shaking his head at the leap in the conversation, "Agreement about what?"

"While you're gone, neither of us will see other people."

"No!" Booth cried in reassurance, almost laughing at the thought. Those few dates with Catherine, the 'social contract' as Bones put it, were fine. But she wasn't Bones, and there could never be anyone else, now that thought he knew how she felt about him. "Of course we won't! Bones, you're the only person for me. I told you that already. You're the _one_. I'm sure of it."

Sighing again, Bones told him after a long pause, "I hate this."

"I know. I do too," he replied. Booth wanted to tell her everything he felt for her. He wanted to say he loved her over and over again until it sunk into that busy brain of hers. The problem was, he wanted to say these things to her face, not over the phone. "But as long as I know you'll be waiting for me, there at the reflecting pool, living until that day is so much easier, Bones."

"I'll be there," she promised, and Booth had to cover the mouth of his phone and clear his throat so his voice would work again.

"So, how about that case, huh?" he asked, needing to change the subject, needing to think about something else for just two minutes.

Bones gasped a little, "Oh! Angela was about to tell us about it. Would you like to listen in for a few minutes?"

"Yeah," Booth smiled. "Yeah, I can do that. Give Hacker a run for his money, hey?"

"I don't know what that means."

Booth laughed to himself at the phrase he would never get tired of hearing, because every time she said that, it meant he had something to teach her for a change. This time however, he didn't bother, instead Booth replied, "Just put me on speaker, Bones."

In his mind's eye, he imagined all his squints in the same room, arguing together about the case as their voices reached him so far away.

* * *

"I already tried that, Sweets," Angela said. "I figured, if the guy keeps killing these people over and over again, they've got to be special to him. They've got to be his family. But none of the sets of four victims we have are related to one another. Most of the time they're very spread out, in time, in space. I can't find the original victims!"

"Who's your first victim?" Sweets asked her, not backing down from the argument. He knew he was right. As a professional criminal profiler, Sweets had studied dozens of serial killers, and there were only a few main types. And for a guy that had been killing, by Angela's estimate, for almost fifteen years did not all of a sudden pull this pattern out of mid air. It had to mean something.

"Sheila Harris," Angela replied, highlighting the name on her board, "fifteen."

"So some time before the death of Sheila Harris, there should be the murder of an entire family."

"You know Sweets," Angela frowned on him. "Some of these records going back that far aren't great. I can't even be sure–" The computer beeped and Angela said, "Yep. Nothing. No entire families, with these four types of people, murdered until almost fifty years beforehand."

Shaking his head, Sweets decided, "That's too much time. Ten or twenty years, maybe. But let's look at what's missing here. There's no father figure. We've got mother, two children, and probably grandpa," Sweets pointed to Angela's virtual piles of names as he spoke, "but there's no father. I'm betting he's the one who keeps recreating the crime."

"Angela," a garbled voice called out over a speaker, which upon turning around Sweets realized was in Brennan's hand. "Did you try looking for families where one of the members was injured, but survived?"

"Booth?" the artist asked, smiling up at Brennan. "Is that you?"

"Yeah," the FBI agent replied. "Hi everyone, it's me."

"Booth!" Hacker cried. "I thought you said you'd have limited communication."

Sweets noticed the way the Deputy Director eyed Brennan, especially her tight grasp on the phone and the smile playing at the edges of her lips, and the psychologist didn't like it. One of the people in this room was not like the others, and Sweets felt almost insulted or threatened, like their proceedings had been invaded and trampled upon and Booth wasn't there to defend them.

Geez, Sweets needed to get out of this environment. As much as he loved working with these people, he realized that he was becoming too dependent on them as friends and family, instead of just coworkers. He had to go back to Indonesia as soon as this case was over; he had to go back to Daisy. Sweets had to create his own family, because Booth's absence was a big reminder that this couldn't last forever. And without these people, where would he be?

Responding to Hacker's question, Booth said, "'Limited' and 'none' aren't the same thing."

"They certainly aren't," the FBI director replied with a hint of humor in his voice to hide the desperate annoyance.

"What did you say, Booth?" Angela asked, typing furiously again.

"I said," Booth replied, his voice getting louder, so he was practically shouting across the miles, "look for families where one of the four was injured, but not killed."

Hmm, Lance thought. That was actually a really good idea, and he wished he'd thought of it. Too many times, he had all the theories, all the postulates, all the hypotheses in his brain, but not enough real-world application of these theories. He needed some more experience outside his field, he decided, so it would be easier to see what Booth saw. He was hoping a year in the Maluku Islands would give him that.

"Okay," Angela said. "The search is going, but it's probably going to take awhile."

Clearing his throat, Booth called out, "I should go. Call me if you need any other pearls of wisdom."

Brennan laughed and Cam chuckled, Hodgins smiled at Lance, and Hacker sighed. Maybe if this cohesive group ostracized the FBI Director long enough, he would just go away. Yeah, with the way Hacker was watching Dr. Brennan, with a goofy-sad, plaintive tilt of his brows, there was no way that was going to happen any time soon. Not without Booth here to defend his territory as the alpha male of the group.

Geez, now Brennan had _him _thinking like an anthropologist. Well, in just a few short weeks, Sweets was marrying one. Might as well get used to it, right?

* * *

_A/N: I got sick last night and had to stay home from work, so you guys get another chapter! Thanks to everyone following and commenting on this story. I'm overwhelmed by the response. Oh, and a major milestone? With this chapter, I will have posted 450K words of fan fiction, all of which was written within the last eleven months. Nanowrimo's gonna eat my dust this year!  
_

_On that note, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and please, let me know what you think...  
_


	7. Truth and Deception

Redux

Chapter 7 – Truth and Deception

Booth was walking through the mess hall, looking for one of his students to give the woman back a hat she had dropped in the conference room, when the hallucinations began. That Specialist looked exactly like … No, it couldn't be! Could it? There was something wrong with Booth's brain again. There had to be!

And then, the hallucination, carefully lifting his fork with gloved hands, sitting near but not _with_ some of the newer soldiers, looked up at Booth. A second of mutual recognition passed before the Specialist shook his head very slightly. Pleading with Booth not to say anything? Asking him not to go over there, pick Zack up by the scruff of his neck and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing here?

Booth had to be hallucinating, right? If anything, though, he didn't want to cause a scene yelling at figments of his imagination like he had when this had happened before. So he finished his errand, took one last look at the hallucination, which was pointedly ignoring him, and left.

* * *

Cam watched her team work together on the list of names, Angela and Sweets having the most to say, while Hacker sat back, nodding periodically and watching when Brennan left. Feeling utterly useless there, Cam followed her anthropologist from the room, catching up just as Brennan reached her office.

"Dr. Brennan?"

The woman turned around, her face tired and surprised, "Yes, Dr. Saroyan?"

"How are you holding up?" Cam asked. She had been worried about Brennan for some time now, and sometimes the coroner had such a hard time reading her coworker. Other times, like when she came back into Angela's office with Booth on speaker phone, it was painfully easy to figure out what was on Brennan's mind.

And it bugged Cam that Brennan's love for Booth was so plain on her face and Seeley still hadn't made up his mind to tell her how he felt. Instead, he'd started seeing a marine biologist of all people. Though Cam's resolve that she'd given Booth good advice after his surgery flagged from time to time, she was ultimately glad she'd done it. A broken-hearted Brennan would be a train wreck. Wasn't it better that Booth left for Afghanistan to serve his country as well as figure things out, rather than stay by Brennan's side, neither of them able to make a move? It was like watching the world's slowest game of chicken and Cam was sick of it.

"I'm just jet-lagged," Brennan replied to Cam's question with a short smile. "How are you?"

Cam thought about it for a moment, pressing her lips together. There was no way she could ask about Booth. Not right off the bat. Finally she replied, "Confused, Dr. Brennan. I wouldn't have thought Zack scampering off was a good enough reason to give up Indonesia."

"In itself, it's not," Brennan said, sitting down at her desk.

Taking a chair on the opposite side of the desk, Cam asked, "What do you mean? What happened?"

"I–" she paused, looking down at her hands on the desk before she said, "I spoke to Booth."

"Oh my god," Cam breathed, sensing something big was coming, but afraid of what it might be. "What did you speak about?"

"I already told Sweets about this, Cam," Brennan said, her voice harsh with defensive frustration, like since Brennan talked about the conversation with Seeley once, that was the end of that. Cam wasn't buying it. Also, she _might_ have been insanely curious.

She nodded, "What about Angela?"

"Angela?" Brennan asked.

"Did you speak to her about why you came back?"

Brennan shook her head slowly, staring out her office door. "We've been working since I got here."

"Well, Sweets is great," Cam told the anthropologist, "but sometimes a girl just needs to talk to another girl."

"But Dr. Saroyan," Brennan argued, her brow all crunched up, "we're both well over the age where we could be considered… Oh. You meant since we're both _female_, you would make a better confidante than Dr. Sweets."

Smiling indulgently, Cam nodded, "That's exactly what I'm saying, Dr. Brennan."

After regarding Cam for a moment, Brennan nodded and asked, "What would you like to cover first?"

"Well, does the conversation with Booth have anything to do with your decision to come home?" Cam asked gently.

"There were several conversations," Brennan replied. "The one where Booth said he wanted to give us a chance, the –"

"He did that?" Cam asked, her mouth falling open in shock. Well, _someone_ had managed to swerve. Cam knew Seeley as well as almost anyone, and she almost thought he was _never_ going to say something. He must have finally been sure about her. But where did that marine biologist come in? "What happened next?"

"I said no," Brennan replied, her voice quiet, like she was ashamed. Well she should be. Anyone could see that she had feelings for her partner. Growing angry, Cam thought to herself that if she had feelings for a guy like Seeley Booth when he declared feelings for her, she would have gone for it in a heartbeat. But Brennan wasn't like Cam, was she?

And Cam wasn't even the same as she used to be. When she and Seeley had been a thing the first time, neither was ready for something serious. And then again, three years ago, Cam was still hurting from breaking up with Andrew and couldn't even dream of wanting the same things Booth wanted. Family, forever, those things were just too difficult to think about yet. So it was right that things between them ended. Booth had never been the guy for her, as great as he was. She'd known what she wanted. Today, Cam wasn't sure what those things were anymore.

Maybe that's why she pushed so hard for this conversation, because one of them should know what she wanted, even if it wasn't Cam. "Please go on, Brennan," the coroner nodded, trying to be as gentle as possible.

The anthropologist nodded, and said, "Things were bad for awhile. I kept feeling … bad," she sighed. "About everything. I thought staying partners would be for the best, and we tried to work together but …" Brennan paused, taking a deep breath before saying, "The gravedigger case happened, and I wanted to keep working here with Booth, but I couldn't."

Cam nodded and pointed out, "You said you got sick of being around the pain that comes with murder investigations. I get that."

"That wasn't the reason," Brennan replied. "I kept having this ache in my heart whenever I thought about Booth getting taken away or shot and now that I knew how he felt about me …"

"It was too much to handle," Cam guessed, watching Brennan nod reluctantly. "We all worry about the people we love, Brennan. That's just the price of admission."

The anthropologist chuckled sadly. "I thought it was too steep a price. I thought it was too much to gamble, trying to be together. I've ruined every other relationship I've been in."

"They all fail," Cam said, realizing she sounded much wiser than she felt, "until it's right." She didn't want to say that even the ones that are right fail sometimes too.

Brennan sighed, nodding. "When Sweets showed up in the Maluku Islands with no warning, I felt ashamed. How could I not be as brave as Sweets? How could I not 'pay that price', as you say? I didn't want to be a coward anymore. So I talked to Booth."

"Uh-huh," Cam replied, biting at one of her nails and practically holding her breath. "You finally told him how you felt?"

"Yes."

"And now you've come home? Telling Booth how you feel won't make him come back any faster. Why not just spend a year working on this find of a lifetime and then see him when you both get home?"

"Because," Brennan blurted angrily, slapping her hand on the desk and refusing to meet Cam's eyes. "After five years of doing this job, I don't know how to go back. I don't know how to stop looking for murderers. I don't know how to be the person I used to be, Cam!"

The coroner blinked for a moment in surprise at the outburst, nodding carefully. If only any of them knew how to be the people they used to be, before life stepped in and changed it all.

* * *

It had been four days since Seeley Booth had hallucinated, and so he figured he was in the clear. It was just an old side effect of his tumor, and since it hadn't happened again, there was no reason to go see the medic. No reason at all.

That is, until the freaking hallucination showed up at his door in the middle of the night, knocking softly but consistently. Groaning because he'd just fallen asleep and getting out of bed after he'd already laid down was painful these days – since his muscles weren't used to this odd sort of exercise anymore – Booth stood and went to the door, frowning at what he saw out there. It looked exactly like Zack Addy, only it wore a military uniform, its hair and eyebrows were a lot lighter than Booth remembered, and it carried a heavy-looking bag slung over one shoulder. One of its gloved hands was still knocking on the door even as Booth opened it.

"That's just great," he said softly, leaving the door open and stepping back to let the hallucination in. "Auditory and visual this time, too. Don't bother saying anything," Booth told the hallucination as he pulled his shoes and his uniform jacket on. "I'm going to the medic right now, and pretty soon you're going to be history."

"What are you talking about, Agent Booth?" the hallucination asked, looking genuinely confused. "Why aren't you more surprised to see me here?"

"You're not here, Zack," Booth replied, trying to step past the hallucination. "It's impossible for you to be here. So, I'm hallucinating again, end of story."

Brows pushed together, it said, "I'm not a hallucination, Agent Booth."

"It's Sergeant Booth, to you, Specialist," Booth snarled with a nod to its uniform, not sure whether to be angry or surprised or amused that he was hallucinating Zack Addy. The two men stared at each other for a second before the hallucination screwed up its courage and poked Booth in the shoulder with one unsteady index finger.

"I assure you, I'm real," Zack said, giving Booth a wary sidelong glance as he moved further into Booth's quarters, carefully dropping his bag to the ground. Without another word, the scientist carefully clutched at his bag's oversized zipper pull, opening the bag to reveal – surprise, surprise – a set of human bones. Taking the bones carefully in his gloved hands, he started laying them out on Booth's bed.

"No!" Booth cried, grabbing Zack's wrist to stop him. "No way. This can't be happening. No way in hell," he chuckled, almost manically, "Zack Addy comes to Afghanistan and starts putting bones in my bunk. This has to be a dream. Yeah, that's it! One perfectly fucked up dream with plenty of symbolism that Sweets will be sure to have a field day with when I get back next year."

"Um," Zack said thoughtfully, pulling his wrist from Booth's grasp. "I don't think I can pinch you," Zack said, demonstrating how he couldn't quite grasp very well with his gloved hands. "I could kick you if you want," he suggested.

"Kick me?" Booth sighed. "Why?"

"To prove you're not dreaming." When Booth didn't reply, Zack shrugged and went back to arranging the bones on his bed. It couldn't be real, could it? The problem was Seeley kept trying to wake up and it kept not happening. And the longer he watched Zack work, the more and more convinced he became that this _was _real. Zack was really here and Booth had no idea what he was up to.

After all the large bones had been transferred from the bag, Zack rooted around at the bottom for a few seconds in frustration before looking up at Booth and saying, "May I ask for your assistance, _Sergeant _Booth? My manual dexterity isn't what it once was and I'm having difficulties with these last few bones."

Still trying to convince himself it was all a weird dream and maybe if he played along, it would end sooner rather than later, Booth grabbed the tiny bones Zack pointed to, placing them where instructed. When they were done, Zack nodded and reached for Booth's collar.

"Zack!" Booth cried, catching the man's arm harshly and holding it away from him. "What are you doing?"

"Fine," the squint said, backing off. "You take off the dog tags. Throw them there," he pointed to the pile of bones.

Dog tags? Booth fished them out from under his jacket, taking another look at how the bones were laid out on his bed. Like they were sleeping…

"What are you doing, Zack?"

"You have to come back to North America," the scientist replied, fumbling to take the last few items from his bag. "Catching this serial killer is much more important than what you're doing here."

"How could you possibly know that?" Booth asked, clutching his tags close to his chest. That was the first rule, never take them off.

Zack met his eyes for only a brief moment as he said, "I've seen the curriculum. Any ex-military law enforcement officer could do this job. They only wanted you because you were here for the first Gulf War. That's not good enough."

"How the hell did you get a look at the curriculum? And how the hell did you get in here?"

Holding his hand out at Booth, obviously expecting his compliance with the dog tag plan, Zack replied, "I am highly intelligent, deceptively strong, and living in a mental hospital for two years has taught me more than I would care to know about manipulating authority figures."

Booth stared at him in shock for five or six breaths before slipping the dog tags over his head and handing them over to the squint. Later on he would tell people that he was on board with Zack's plan from the beginning, _not_ that he was afraid of what Zack might do if he didn't hand over the tags. "Remind me never to get on your bad side, Zack."

"I will keep that in mind, Agent Booth."

Zack positioned the bones in Booth's bed, placing the dog tags around the skeleton's neck, and then pulled a small incendiary device from his bag. "These bones are false replicas modeled off various X-ray images in your FBI medical file. It will take anyone but me and Dr. Brennan several days to realize that this is not you."

"What happens when they do find out?" Booth asked, disturbed that Zack had made a somewhat accurate replica of his skeleton while on the lam. Or while on the _base_ these past four days! Eyeing the device as Zack carefully set the timer, Booth found himself feeling sorry for that set of bones. What Zack had planned for them couldn't be pleasant, and … he was _empathizing_ with a _skeleton_. A _fake_ skeleton!

"They will find out soon afterwards that I kidnapped you, Agent Booth," Zack replied, his tongue peeking out from behind his lips as he concentrated on getting his fingers to work the device. "I am a fugitive known to be mentally unstable."

"Oh, come on!" Booth cried. "You really think anyone's going to believe that you kidnapped me?"

"They will," he said, taking a glass vial from his pocket and dropping it on the floor before smashing it with the heel of his standard-issue combat boot, "when they find evidence that I used a sedative. Besides," Zack said, smiling up at Booth, "like I said, I'm deceptively strong."

"There's no way I could be worth all this trouble, Zack!"

"You're not," the squint replied, pressing a button on the incendiary and shooing Booth out the door. "But I need Dr. Brennan to solve this case. And according to all available data, she needs you."

Bones needed him? She needed him to solve this case, and Zack seemed to think this single case was worth an insane amount of effort. Of course, according to all the data available to Booth, Zack was insane. And how sane was Booth? Letting Zack "kidnap" him? He should sound the alarm. He should practice what he was preaching to the soldiers here and take Zack down, immobilize him so he could be shipped back to the hospital in DC.

Then again, Booth should never have come here in the first place.

Zack closed the door behind him and continued in a whisper, "We have approximately fifty three seconds to vacate the area. And just thirty seconds after that to meet our transport outside the fencing. Follow me."

"Wait," Booth hissed, finally realizing what was going on. "How powerful is that explosive? You can't hurt anyone to get me out of here, Zack. I won't let you."

Zack _smirked_, "I triple checked the calculation, Booth. The device will only burn your quarters before the fire alarms and sprinklers activate."

"Are these the same calculations that got your hands blown up?" Booth asked, though he followed Zack as the smaller man hurried down the corridor.

"Completely different calculations," he replied, a little winded as they fled the building, crouched over and dashing from cover to cover until they got near the gates leading from the base. Zack checked his watch and Booth saw him nodding his head in time with the seconds as they ticked by. He almost asked what Zack was waiting for, until a startling explosion rang out from the back of the base and every single light for as far as he could see went completely dark. He was blind, only able to make out the fuzziest of shadows against the light coming from a distant village. "Hang on and follow me," Zack said, hitting Booth's chest with one of his arms and waiting for Booth to take it before moving them both forward.

"Zack," Booth whispered back as his eyes slowly got used to the complete darkness of the desert night, "you are one creepy guy."

"Thank you, Agent Booth," the scientist replied, pushing Booth toward the driver's side of a military Jeep, where a private handed him the keys with what Booth thought was a sharp salute in the darkness.

* * *

_A/N: This took a while because while the Booth parts were really easy to write, the Cam part was giving me difficulties. So, what did you think about how it turned out? Was it worth the wait?_


	8. False Assumptions

_A/N: At the top here, I just want to thank everyone for reading, especially those of you who review, favorite, and follow on story alert. I've never had this much response to a story before, and I can't thank you guys enough. Just eight chapters in and over a hundred people following! _

_Please Enjoy!_

_

* * *

_**Redux**

Chapter 8 – False Assumptions

As Booth drove down the dark desert road, sighing, snarling, and opening his mouth like he wanted to say something, but never did, Zack began to wonder if he _had_ done the right thing. Maybe if he went through the numbers they would work out in his favor? This serial killer had murdered at least forty people that Zack new of. And he was smart. He was diligent and good at covering his tracks if no one had suspected him previously. Depending on his age, he could kill another forty or fifty or a hundred people before he died, because Zack was fairly certain he wouldn't be caught. Zack was unsure, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the lives Booth could save by working here would come up about even with the ones he would save by finding this killer. About even was acceptable, wasn't it?

Zack wondered then if he should think up a name for the serial killer, so he could stop referring to the killer as 'he' since the pronoun was vague and gender-specific. While it was true that the vast majority of serial killers were male, that didn't equal one hundred percent. Plus, since Zack did not yet have any remains to work from, he was not sure whether the victims were killed violently, as males tended to kill, or by subtle means like poison, which females generally favored. Zack hated words like 'tended', 'about' and 'generally', but he'd been working with Sweets and his other doctors at the hospital on getting used to using them. And Zack had never been one to shirk on his homework.

When Booth spoke, it was so unexpected that Zack jumped, "Just how the fu-_hell_ do you plan on getting us back to the US? The army is going to be after you for doing this. Or, they'll have your picture up everywhere, anyways. And I can't just show up, you know. If I'm supposed to be dead for the next few days…"

"I have arranged alternate identities for us," Zack replied, trying to sound confident in his plan, when he was feeling anything but. The whole time he'd been traveling, he'd been working on the initial plan – get into the base, get Booth, get out. The amount of time Zack had spent planning what happened afterward was, while sufficient, hardly putting his mind at ease. But, he couldn't waste another day at the base without someone starting to seriously question his cover story.

"And I have estimated that if we move quickly enough, we should make it to Montreal before global police and military forces have been informed."

Booth gave him a hard look in the darkness before turning his eyes back to the road. "I don't like those _ifs_, Zack."

"I don't either, Agent Booth," Zack replied, giving him what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

They drove for a few more minutes before Booth startled Zack again, growling, "Shit!"

"What?" Zack asked, trying to see beyond where the headlights illuminated the road, searching the horizon for some danger.

"I left my satellite phone behind. Bones can't get a hold of me."

"That's good," Zack replied, wondering why Booth was getting so upset. "If she made a call, the Army would be able to track our location, thinking I must have stolen your phone before setting you on fire. It's better we don't contact anyone until we reach Canada. Or perhaps if we can find a disposable cell phone for purchase before then."

"We have to call sooner, Zack! The army is probably telling my brother right now that I'm dead! And who do you think _he's_ going to tell first?"

Zack hated these guessing games, when people were involved. It made him really root around in his memory for something relevant to say. Eventually, he came up with, "Your grandfather?"

"Bones!" Booth shouted, quite unnecessarily, seeing as they were in an enclosed space together. "I promised her if I ever had to fake die again, she'd be the first to know."

"So she'll be the first one we call when we can," Zack replied, crunching up his face in confusion. Why was he so upset? "It's going to be fine, Booth."

"Sure," the agent snarled, angrily correcting the Jeep back into the proper lane, "it's going to be fine, _eventually_. I'm worried about those one or two days where Bones'll be out of her mind thinking I must be dead. I mean she just got up the courage to …"

Zack waited for Agent Booth to continue but he didn't, pressing his lips together in a tight line instead. "To what?" Zack asked.

"To take the leap, Zack," Booth huffed. "To give us a shot. To be with me! Get it, kid?"

"Oh, you and Dr. Brennan have romantic feelings for one another," Zack nodded. He knew all about that. Plus, whenever Angela came to visit, she would update Zack on how well the two of them were getting along and what she thought it meant for their partnership. Zack hadn't really wanted to know this information, but he didn't want Angela to go, so he brought it up every time she came. "I'm glad that's sorted out now."

Booth snorted. "Well it won't be if she thinks I'm dead and completely shuts down. How soon until we can get somewhere we can buy one of these untraceable phones?"

Zack did the calculation in a split second, "Approximately forty hours."

With a grimace and a grumble, Booth kept driving and Zack tried to remind himself of all the reasons this was the right thing to do. He might also have been rehearsing them for when Booth tried to shoot him for messing everything up. But it was going to be fine, wasn't it? It had to be.

* * *

When Angela got back to the mansion, pulling her car into the garage over which Zack used to live, Jack met her at the door into the house. "How you holdin' up, babe?" he asked, putting his hand in Angela's and leading her through the hallways and toward the kitchen. "Too tired to eat?"

"Too tired to move," Angela chuckled, collapsing onto a stool sitting next to the kitchen's big preparation island. "But some food would be great."

Jack smiled and pulled a plate out of the warm oven, handing his wife a fork as he set the food in front of her and removed the metal warming bonnet. "Voila."

Angela beamed up at him. "I know you didn't make this, Hodgins," she smiled, "but I could kiss your lips right off your face anyways."

Jack laughed, serving Angela a glass of water before sitting down next to her and watching her eat. The moans she made when the first bite hit her tongue were definitely worth waiting up for her. "Did you and Sweets work anything else out?"

"We've got about five candidates for what could be the first family to become victims," she sighed, leaning in when Jack gently petted her hair. God, he loved this hair! "And we could just as easily be missing a hundred more by using the wrong parameters."

"Don't worry, hon," Jack whispered, rubbing Angela's back and leaning his head against hers. "We'll get it. And supposedly Zack's going to get back in touch with us, so hopefully he'll have something good when he's done with this walkabout he's gone on."

"What if," Angela sighed, taking a bite, chewing and swallowing it before she continued, "he _never_ comes back? What if he decides it's too dangerous to help us and he's never going back to the hospital?"

"Angela," Jack leveled with her, turning his wife in her seat so she would look at him, "Zack's the most rational guy I know. And he's stubborn. If he says he broke out to work on this case, he's going to work on this case. If only so he can declare himself 'King of the Lab'."

A slow smile spread across her lips as Angela took in his words and eventually she kissed Jack. "You're right, sweetie. Though I'm not sure he can declare himself King of the Lab unless he actually comes to _work_ in the lab."

"I'll be sure to mention that when he calls."

Angela turned back to eating and Jack just sat with her, enjoying the fact that there was someone else in his house after the servants had left. It seemed wasteful that it took a full time staff to keep this giant house running just for him. He hadn't minded, though. He had plenty of money, so he might as well give some people jobs. Let the trickle-down effect work its supposed magic. But now it felt better that Angela was here too. Happier. Less pathetic.

_Because, let's face it_, Jack thought. He'd always been pathetic without her.

* * *

Five days after she arrived back in the US, Brennan was working with Dr. Saroyan and Mr. Nigel-Murray on the remains of Rose Johnson, one of the two victims who had ever been found. Dr. Saroyan had finally gotten Hacker to contact the woman's family and get their consent to have the remains exhumed. Brennan found herself wondering what she had ever found appealing about Hacker when he wouldn't even do everything in his power to push the paperwork through. Booth always went out on a limb for their investigations, doing whatever it took to get the case solved. That's what made them such a good team.

"Dr. Brennan," Mr. Nigel-Murray spoke up, gently manipulating one of the bones so that the magnification camera could focus in on it. "Here is the stab wound found during the first autopsy." Then the man chuckled softly. "Autopsy," he repeated, "from the Greek, 'to see for oneself'. Quite fitting in this case, don't you agree, Dr. Brennan?"

"Indeed, Mr. Nigel-Murray," Bones replied softly, examining the slice across the rib. It appeared to her eye consistent with the original cause of death. "Let's continue searching," she insisted, "to make sure no other injuries were missed once this one was discovered."

"Aye-aye, Dr. Brennan," the intern replied merrily and Bones shared a look of shared annoyance with Dr. Saroyan. She still didn't know how to feel about Cam making her spill out everything that was on her mind the other day, but it had been cathartic.

That conversation and the daily updates from Ms. Wick had helped Bones come to terms with the fact that although the Maluku Island find was important and field-changing, it had never felt like Bones' discovery. It belonged to the others, and she was alright with that, especially if she could still be involved from afar. She thought of what her colleagues might ask her about abandoning the dig and she would just have to cite personal reasons, which she hated to be sure. But, she could always boast that one of her students was chosen to be on the team. Ms. Wick was an exceptional, if overenthusiastic, scientist and Bones felt conflicted about being proud of her and being worried that she would treat Sweets like Bones had kept wanting to treat Booth – as less important than her work. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Then, Cam's expression fell, her eyes focused beyond Bones' shoulder, and she whispered, "Uh-oh." Bones turned around, stomach sinking, to see Jared Booth approaching the steps up to the platform.

"Tempe?" he called from beyond the security line, his voice soft. "Can I talk to you?"

Pain was evident on his face and when Bones looked back at Cam, she recognized unrestrained grief in the coroner's expression as well. Investigating murders had given her experience when it came to recognizing that expression and there was only one reason for it now.

"No!" Bones cried angrily, ripping off her gloves and throwing them on the floor. "No! I don't believe you!" Furious that Jared could do this to her, Bones stomped across the platform away from him, heading for her office. Once there, she slammed the door, locked it and collapsed back against it, sliding slowly to the floor. When had she started crying?

A soft knock startled her as she wiped her face dry, followed closely by Jared's sad, "Brennan? C'mon, I promised him I would tell you first."

So enraged she couldn't see straight, Bones threw one of her fists to the side and back, hitting the door beside her and making it rattle dangerously. "There's nothing to tell me Jared!" she shouted through the door. "It's not true. It's a mistake."

"Well," he chuckled a bit, his voice closer like he was crouched down at the seam of the door, near her ear, "then there were two _very misinformed_ soldiers at my house for no good reason this morning."

How could he be laughing, even sadly? How could Jared joke about his brother's death? How could he keep living with this damned familiar pain crushing his heart into a million pieces until they couldn't form a working organ anymore? How could he breathe?

What was it that Sweets had said? He couldn't live without Daisy? Bones _couldn't_ _live_ without Booth.

She might be dying of this, but she wasn't going to break down and sob hopelessly. The word of a few soldiers was hardly irrefutable evidence that Booth was gone. So, her death would have to wait until all the facts were in evidence.

Steeling her resolve, Bones wiped her face one more time, stood up, unlocked the door, and whipped it open to reveal Jared Booth crouching down as she had suspected. With a confused look of surprise and trepidation, he stood up and said, "Temperance…"

"I refuse to get any more upset about this until I see _proof_, Jared. Find me proof that he's gone, and then I'll believe you."

"You," he asked, flicking his eyes back toward the forensics platform behind him, "you want his _remains_ or something? Because I gotta tell you –"

"I believe that pictures of his remains would be sufficient," Bones blurted out, almost losing her composure when she thought about having to see those pictures. But anything would be better than this clawing unease of not knowing.

"Tempe, there was a fire," Jared sighed, putting his hand on the outside of her shoulder like he thought it might help. "There wasn't much left."

"That's better," she decided all of a sudden, stepping away from Jared's hand and heading for her office phone. "That means there's a better chance it's not him."

"They found him in his quarters! His tags were on the remains, Tempe!" Jared growled at her. "It's him!"

Bones shook her head and picked up the receiver, holding it out to Jared, "Unless his tags were surgically implanted, which I know they weren't, I'm not prepared to believe it's him."

"What would make you believe?" Jared asked. "Bren, I'm just barely holding it together here!"

Shaking the phone receiver at Booth's brother so he would take it, Bones insisted. "Call someone. Have them send me pictures and X-rays of the remains. If I can identify them as Booth, I will believe you."

Jared sighed. "You'll use the same standard as for everyone else, right? Because I couldn't bear it if you told me he was alive only to be proven wrong later. I'd never forgive you for that, Temperance."

"I wouldn't ask you to," she replied, handing him the phone one last time before he took it. As Jared made his call, Angela ran up to the door of Bones' office. Her face was a wreck of emotion, and Bones wouldn't have expected anything less from her best friend, but she couldn't handle that right now. All she could handle was a tense, "Not now," as she shooed her friend away and closed the door.

* * *

Six hours later, Jared and Bones had both pulled all the strings (metaphorically) they could think of and now Bones was staring at her computer screen. All she had to do was start clicking and open the images. Then she would know.

The past six hours had felt like years, waiting for calls to be returned, waiting on hold, trying to eat something and then throwing it back up helplessly. Jared was still with her, as was Angela, who Bones had allowed to sit quietly on the couch after she'd tried to ask Bones for the seventeenth time how she was holding up. Anyone could see that she _wasn't _holding up. Anyone could see that Bones was about ready to start destroying things in a fit of anger, as if taking everything down around her would help.

How? How could she reciprocate Booth's feelings and then lose him to a _fire_ of all things? Booth wasn't supposed to die, and even if it was, his death was supposed to be heroic! He was supposed to die saving someone from the bad guys! He wasn't supposed to die in a damn fire! Therefore, it couldn't be true! Could it?

There was only one way to know for sure.

Taking a deep breath and making sure her waste basket was still at her feet, ready to be used if these images provoked a visceral response, Bones clicked on the first one.

It was a charred femur, broken in half by the blaze, jagged edge pointing up toward the camera. "This is all wrong," she pointed out.

"I know, sweetie," Angela sighed. "Booth wasn't supposed to –"

"No," Bones laughed, pointing to the photograph. "This isn't _bone_!"

"They identified his dental records, Brennan!" Jared shouted, looking like he was about to hit something and Bones hoped it wouldn't be her glass desk. "How can you sit there and tell me that's not my brother's bone?"

"It's not," she smiled, letting her finger touch the screen, as if she could heft the bone and tell by the feel that it wasn't Booth. "Bone doesn't crack like this in a fire. The patterns are similar, but not the same. This is a very sophisticated replica. I would guess that these bones are made of hydroxyapatite and they are the correct size and shape of," she clicked through the pictures rapidly, "Booth's skeleton. But histological sections would show that these were never living bones. And look! There's no charred tissue! I doubt this was ever anything more than a replica skeleton!"

Bones stood up, laughing and caught Jared in a hug. "He's alive! Booth is alive!"

"Who?" Jared asked, staring at the computer screen as Bones released him to grab Angela in a tight hug as well, laughing at the bewildered looks on their faces. "Who would do this?"

"Oh _my_ god," Angela blurted out. "Which recently escaped mental patient do we know who could pull something like this off?"

"Escaped …" Jared asked, "…what?" Turning to Bones, he asked, "Did she just say _mental patient_?"

"Zack!" Bones shouted, so giddy with relief that she felt like she could jump up and down like a school girl. Which, by the way, was a phrase with connotations she really resented. "Zack must have made and placed the skeleton!"

"Why?" Jared asked next, but Bones was too caught up in excitement to answer, dragging Angela out towards the others, who waited sadly in Cam's office.

"It's not him!" Bones blurted out, her grin starting to tire her face, even though there was no way she was going to lose it anytime soon. "It's not even a real skeleton!"

Cam, Hodgins, Sweets, and Mr. Nigel-Murray all looked up in various degrees of shock. And then Bones' joy infected everyone and they were all up on their feet laughing and celebrating, until Jared shouted, "Enough! What's going on? I want to know why the hell this happened!"

"It was Zack," Bones blurted out. "Though I cannot guess at his motives."

"I can," Hodgins grinned. "He _said_ he wasn't working this case without Booth."

Jared pointed out, each word more incredulous than the last, "So he faked Seeley's death."

"To get him out. He faked Seeley's death so they won't be looking for him and he can get back here more easily," Cam surmised, and everyone else was inclined to agree. And then everyone wanted to see the pictures, to get a look at Zack's handiwork. Bones felt vindicated when Mr. Nigel-Murray confirmed that the bones were false and Jared finally calmed down enough to laugh about how crazy Zack was and about how they would all probably be seeing both men very soon.

Bones felt something shift inside her that day. Maybe it was because of her heart being crushed and then slapped back together. Maybe it grew back differently, with different scars cut across the old ones. But Bones didn't think much of tissues or organs. It was more important that she felt, deep in her bones, Booth was coming back to her soon and when she saw him, everything else, including this case, would fall into place. No one said she wasn't being a little naïve.

* * *

_A/N: Aren't you glad I wrapped that all up in one chapter? :) Probably very few updates, if any, this week. But the weekend will roll around again._

_Don't forget to review!  
_


	9. American Soil

_A/N: Life and my other stories caught up to me, but finally: here is another chapter!_

_If anyone is interested, I'm looking for a Bones __**beta reader**__, to catch the occasional typo for me. If you'd like the job, go ahead and PM me. Thanks and enjoy!_

_

* * *

_**Redux**

Chapter 9 – American Soil

As Sweets listened to Vincent Nigel-Murray present the finding of his investigation into Rose Johnson's remains, he tried to stay detached. He tried to sculpt all the pieces of information into a coherent picture of the human being who could have done this. The middle-aged woman from a small town in New Mexico had been strangled, beaten, and stabbed. Sweets tried to focus on the fact that there was only one stab wound. For such a fierce attack, that single killing blow seemed out of place, almost like it had been an accident.

Well, if their prevailing theory was correct and this man was recreating an earlier murder, perhaps the original was an accident. A terrible fight gone horribly wrong. But who, of the five original families Angela's search had unearthed, was the original Rose Johnson? Which of these women died of a single stab wound?

"And, finally, the trace insect activity that Dr. Hodgins found suggests…" Nigel-Murray continued, his personal brand of chipper decorum suffused through every word. How could someone, even someone whose dream it was to work in this field, be so…_flippant_ about another human being's death? Sweets saw this same compartmentalization in Daisy sometimes and that bothered him a little. He knew Daisy was the one for him, but if she could wall herself off from the reality of this horror, would she start walling him off eventually, too?

_No_, Sweets thought. _She wouldn't do that to me_. _And even if she starts to, if I call her on it right away, Daisy is self-aware enough to change her behavior. _Sweets hated thinking these thoughts and he had a second of regretting getting involved in this case. At least he regretted that and not promising to spend a year in Indonesia with his fiancée. He was just upset about having to postpone his year abroad, and anxious to get back there so he could marry his girl.

"…at least three days before being buried. What do you think that means, Dr. Sweets?" Mr. Nigel-Murray's voice broke into Lance's thoughts and all eyes in the room turned to him.

"Uh, sorry," he stammered, sifting through his brain for any scrap of the information he'd missed. "The suspect murdered Mrs. Johnson three days before burying her?" he asked, getting nods from all around. "Well, I would guess that since her body was found in Colorado, but she was abducted in New Mexico, that some of the time was spent traveling." Standing up and going to the board, Sweets pointed at one of the women who had been killed along with her family. "I'm most interested in the similarities Mrs. Johnson's murder has to this one. Naomi Gleeson."

"Yeah," Angela agreed, pushing some buttons to enlarge Mrs. Gleeson's record on the screen. "Forty-two, stabbed during an argument by her husband, Harold. The guy then…oh, God," the artist frowned, turning away to face the room as she continued. "The husband then shot Naomi's father, as well as the couple's two children. The girl was sixteen, the boy was seven. He survived."

"What happened to the husband?" Cam asked, her expressive brown eyes wide and her mouth frowning. Sweets had to agree. This case was one of the most distasteful ones they'd investigated, if only for the sheer scale of it.

Angela matched Cam's frown and replied, "Michael Gleeson left a note of apology and ran right away after the murders. They haven't found him."

"So he could be our killer," Sweets concluded. "Replaying the murder of his family over and over again."

"Could be," Angela nodded, waving away Brennan's open mouth as she said, "and I know that's a leap, sweetie. But it's all we have to go on right now, isn't it?"

"It is true," Brennan nodded, "that none of the evidence we've collected yet would indicate the specific identity of the killer. In fact, the force and angle of the stab wound indicate that anyone over seventy kilograms, and at least one hundred sixty-five centimeters tall could have delivered the blow."

"What does that mean to the rest of us?" Sweets asked, giving Brennan an encouraging look to let her know he wasn't being critical.

Mr. Nigel-Murray replied in her stead, scratching the back of his head and letting his eyes roll up towards the ceiling as he said, "Those statistics would be consistent with any larger-than-average woman and almost any man, according to recent statistics. Did you know that the tallest–"

"Relevance," Cam cut off the intern, rubbing both temples with the fingers and thumb of one hand, which served to cover her eyes too. Sweets wondered if Cam was okay dealing with this case. Normally her experience as a police officer and then a coroner gave her a steady hand and mind. There were the occasional cases that really got to her, though, and Lance wondered if maybe he should talk to her and make sure everything was fine. But if he was going to leave within a few weeks, the whole team would have to get used to his absence, including the absence of his often-solicited and always-free psychological advice.

The rest of the team went back to discussing this family and Sweets sat back, a tight feeling in his gut that this was the first thread and once they started pulling on it, everything would unravel. Whether that unraveling led to the successful conclusion of the case or to something unexpected and awful, Sweets knew he couldn't get too tangled up in it. He had a fiancée to get back to.

* * *

Booth scrambled up to the first convenience store he saw in Montreal, Zack in tow, and bullied the scientist into buying a disposable cell phone. Booth had his own money, but Zack insisted that they only use cash so that the authorities wouldn't find them. Apparently it wasn't part of his "plan" to get caught so soon. He kept talking about how important it was that he be free to work the case until the killer was caught, but Booth noticed that more and more it seemed that Zack was trying to convince himself, rather than Booth.

As soon as the phone was out of its packaging and functional, Booth dialed his partner's cell number from memory. He held his breath while the phone rang four damn times before she answered, "Cam?"

"No, Bones," he exhaled before falling back on the words he'd practiced over and over. "I don't know what you heard, but it's me. It's Booth."

"Oh, hello Booth," she replied, sounding happy but not nearly as surprised as he would have guessed.

"You didn't hear?" he asked, suddenly uncompromisingly upset. "Jared promised he-"

"He did," Bones cut him off. "Just after the Army informed him of your death, he found me at the lab."

"Then…why?"

"Why aren't I more surprised to hear from you?" she chuckled and Booth recognized it as her, 'I know better than you,' chuckle.

"Yeah," he replied, suddenly knowing where this conversation was headed. "You know, Zack said you would be the first to figure it out."

"So it _was_ Zack," she laughed. "We did surmise that he would have the capacity to synthesize such an accurate replica. How did he get to Afghanistan, though?"

"I'm not exactly sure," Booth replied, looking back to see Zack patiently guarding their luggage. "He showed up on the base in a Specialist's uniform and," Booth laughed, "I thought I was going nuts again."

"Booth," Bones said, her voice growing quieter over the silence of a few long seconds, "I'm glad you're not dead."

"Yeah," he whispered back. "Yeah, me too." After sighing, Booth continued, "I'm sorry Zack and I put you through that again. I called as soon as I could."

"I know," she replied, clearing her throat and Booth wondered if she was crying. He hated that thought, especially since he wasn't there to comfort her.

"Do you know if the Army…" Booth cringed, hating to ask this of her, but needing to know. "Did they talk to Rebecca? Is Parker okay?"

"Jared mentioned something about checking up on them, but I don't think Parker was told anything about your fallacious death," Bones said. "I can call him and find out if you'd like."

"No," Booth shook his head, "I'll do it. Thanks, Bones."

After another long moment of silence, she asked, "Where are you?"

Looking back at Zack, Seeley sighed and replied, "I can't tell you yet. Closer than I was last time we talked."

"Why can't you tell me? I wouldn't tell anyone."

Booth chuckled at the indignation in her voice. "I know you wouldn't, Bones. But everyone knows Zack was your student, and I wouldn't put it above some of my colleagues at the Bureau to put a tap on your phone in hopes of finding him."

Overhearing Booth's words, Zack approached him and tried to take the phone away from Booth, earning a strong hand on his chest and a stiff arm holding him out of reach. Huffing, the scientist backed off and Booth expected him to tap his watch or make a 'hurry up' gesture, but he didn't. Zack probably wasn't familiar with those forms of nonverbal communication, Booth supposed, even though he had considered such gestures universal before he met Bones and her strange student.

"Oh," Bones replied to his explanation, the word falling in surprise from her mouth. "I didn't even think of that."

"That's why you're the science lady and I'm the FBI agent," Booth laughed, his heart leaping when she chuckled with him. He loved that low laugh of hers. "Speaking of, I should probably go. Zack's giving me the evil eye."

"I don't know what that means," Bones muttered quickly, as if not wanting the customary explanation. Plowing right ahead, she confessed, "I just want to know when I'll see you."

"I really don't know. Zack's got some sort of a plan, I'm sure," he said in a soft voice, hoping Zack wouldn't be able to make out the words. He didn't want the guy knowing Booth had suspicions that despite all his planning, Zack had been winging it for a while. Ignoring Zack's fidgety pacing a few feet away, Seeley asked, "Any more progress on the case?"

"Sweets and Angela are convinced that a man named Michael Gleeson, who stabbed his wife, and then shot her father and his own two children, is behind these murders. He fled and was never caught."

"The whole family died?" Booth asked in surprise. "I thought Angela couldn't find a case that matched."

"No," Bones told him. "The son, also named Michael, survived."

On a hunch, Booth asked his partner, "How long was it between these first killings and the next one?"

"Um," she mumbled, the sound of paper rustling in the background. "About fifteen years?"

"That's a long time," he muttered, thinking over the problem. "I don't know if it was him."

"Who else would it be?" Bones asked. "You think Angela and Sweets have pinpointed the wrong family?"

"How old was the son?"

Bones rustled her papers again before answering, "Seven."

Doing the math quickly in his head, yes he could do basic math, thank you very much, Booth came to the conclusion that, "It was him. The son. He grew up and took after his old man, in the worst possible way." Booth got a sudden vision of Parker in an Army Ranger uniform, a sniper rifle up to his eye and pointed down at a playground full of kids dressed as warlords and terrorists. Man, if that didn't send shivers down his spine!

"We have no evidence to support your claim, Booth," his partner insisted, "except that according to his most recent driver's license, Michael Gleeson Junior falls within the calculated parameters of the killer." Booth was about to open his mouth and congratulate himself when Bones added, "Along with sixty-five percent of the adult population."

"Oh," he replied shortly. "But it can be conjecture for now, right?" he asked. "You know, a hypothesis to test."

"Booth!" Bones cried with a chuckle. "You _have_ been paying attention."

Returning her laugh, Seeley replied, "I've been paying attention to a lot of things, Bones." As their shared mirth died down, Booth noticed Zack staring daggers at him – an expression that _was_ universal, even for creepy squints – and said, "I've really got to go, Bones. I'll talk to you soon."

"Goodbye, Booth," she whispered. "Talk to you soon."

And then it was over. Seeley had to wait for the next phone call, and who knew when Zack's "plan" would allow for that. Speaking of, Booth turned to the man in question and asked, "What now, Zack? You're the genius. What's the next step in your genius plan?"

"I believe it would be correctly called an ingenious plan, Agent Booth," the squint replied, "grammatically speaking."

"Aren't you science types supposed to suck at English things like grammar?" Booth asked, hiking his bag onto his shoulder and following Zack down the sidewalks of Montreal.

"I am well trained in all forms of academic success," Zack replied, consulting a map as they reached a corner. "I went to private school, where the education was superior. Plus, I have a very high IQ, which means understanding and remembering all rules of grammar is much easier for me than it is for you."

"I don't know about _much_ easier," Booth muttered, following Zack when he made a decision. A bit louder he asked, "So what's the plan?"

Zack shrugged and put away his map, saying, "We investigate the murders in Toronto."

"How?" Booth asked, getting around in front of Zack so the guy would stop short. "I'm not much good to you without my FBI credentials _and_ contacts. This is outside my jurisdiction, Zack. If I'm going to get anything done, diplomacy has to happen first."

Zack looked up at Booth and breathed, "Oh. I hadn't thought of that."

"Exactly," Seeley nodded. "So let's think about this plan together, alright?"

Taking his map back out and studying it, Zack asked, "How fast can you walk one point three miles?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Booth shot back angrily. "And I don't know, twenty minutes? Half an hour?"

"Good," the squint nodded, folding the map back up and pulling two canteens from a pocket in his bag. "It's hot out today. Make sure you drink enough water," Zack ordered, handing Booth one of the canteens. The _pink_ one. Or maybe it was metallic red, but it looked pink enough for Booth to be offended. But, besides shooting Zack an angry look and following him back the way they came, Seeley didn't say anything. Might as well just let the squint do his thing.

Booth took a few swigs as they got going, wondering why his pack would be so heavy if he'd left almost all of his belongings behind. It was only fifteen minutes and half a canteen later that Booth realized something was wrong. "Zack," he called ahead to the squint. "I'm not feeling so great."

"Drink more water," Zack urged, waving him forward faster.

Booth did feel thirsty. And dizzy and a little fuzzy around the edges. It wasn't that hot out, was it? After being in the desert for two weeks, he couldn't really tell. A little more water would probably help.

It didn't. "Zack!" Booth complained. "What's going on?"

"Just a little further," Zack urged, waiting patiently next to a wrought-iron gate. "You can sit down here, Agent Booth."

"You fucking drugged me, didn't you?" Booth accused, sitting where Zack told him to, because he couldn't figure out why not to.

Taking Seely's arm in one of his gloved hands, Zack raised it up and locked a handcuff around Booth's wrist, attaching the other end to the wrought-iron gate. "Before you pass out, I want you to remember three things."

"What?" Booth asked, addled by whatever Zack had slipped him.

"You are Sergeant Seeley Booth again," he slipped Booth's old wallet into the agent's front shirt pocket, "and I kidnapped you. You did not assist me in any way, except under heavy sedation. And finally, you would not divulge the information I wanted about the location of Gormogon's things, and I had no more use for you."

"Why are you doing this?" Booth asked, tugging on his arm and frowning as the cuffs refused to come undone.

"You have to go back to the FBI," Zack insisted, "and I can't go back to the hospital. Not until we solve this case." He took the prepaid cell phone from Booth's pocket and held it up. "I will be in touch soon."

Booth looked up once before he passed out to see a giant American flag flapping jauntily in the Montreal breeze. Zack left him at the consulate, on American soil.

* * *

_A/N: Please don't forget to review. I love hearing from you!_


	10. Walls

_A/N: This chapter is totally going to make up for the three week hiatus. I promise!_

* * *

**Redux**

Chapter 10 – Walls

Three days after Jared came to tell them Booth was dead, Brennan got the call she'd been waiting for and Angela could almost feel how much more relaxed her friend was after having talked to her … what? Partner? Well, obviously the man she was in love with, but Brennan had yet to confide in her. Angela knew she should ask a million questions – Why _exactly_ had Brennan come back from her dig? What had she talked to Booth about? How was he doing, being kidnapped? What would Brennan say to him when she saw him next – but she couldn't seem to find a minute alone with her friend. Angela was beginning to suspect that this turn of events was by Brennan's design rather than by happenstance. What didn't she want to talk about?

Sitting back on her couch, staring at a picture of the man who had killed most of his family, Angela sighed. It was well past time to let go of the best-friend mantle, wasn't it? That title had belonged to Booth for so long, Angela had a hard time remembering how things had been before. Never would she give up on Brennan, but she knew that the time when she really needed Angela was gone. Now they could just be very good friends, which was probably for the best, seeing as now Angela had a husband – a real one this time – and had been looking forward to building a life with him for so long, she couldn't remember how things had been before that feeling either.

How could Michael Gleeson have attacked the people closest to him? Sweets said that the wife's death was probably accidental, that this man whose picture she held had probably snapped and killed the rest of his family out of grief or hopeless despair. God, what a shame! Angela saw things she wished she hadn't every day at this job, but helping put people to rest, people like Kirk, was good work. Work she couldn't leave behind just yet. People were drawn to the places they were supposed to be at the times they were supposed to be there. Angela believed that. And no other place felt as right to her as the Jeffersonian. Not at the moment. And that's what Angela loved best – living in the moment.

But now she had to think about the past, and about how this awful, broken man might have aged in the thirty years since his disappearance. If she could get a good, accurate projection of how he looked today, her face-recognition software might be able to find him in any number of databases. It was worth a shot, anyways.

After staring at his old driver's license photo, maintained over the years in a police file, copied and scanned several times over until the picture blurred frustratingly, Angela got to work, lengthening the jowls, nose, and ears, adding the wrinkles and wear of time, deepening the frown lines with sharp, angry strokes of her pencil. This was not a happy man, and Angela wondered if he ever had been. He'd been angry and disturbed enough to massacre his family. But had he loved his wife at some point? Had they started out a happy family? Had they gone on their honeymoon, full of hope for the future and the first plans they'd ever made for a family, a long full life together? Or had he always lived in the moment, at times ecstatic and at others furious? Maybe if she found him, she could ask him these questions – look this monster in the eye and figure out how different he was from her, to have been able to do these things.

* * *

Smacking at the dry, bitter taste in his mouth, Booth carefully opened his eyes, squinting at the bright afternoon sun blinding him through the window of – oh, his hospital room. There was something new…

With a sigh, he sat up and glared around the room, noting the IV in his arm, the fact that his lucky socks were gone, damn it, and there was a grumpy looking man in a suit sitting in the chair next to his bed. "Uh, hey," he said when the man, who had dark skin and gray hair and the stink of State Department all over him. "What happened?"

"That's what we were hoping to ask you, Sergeant Booth," the man said, his accent Southern-tinged and no-nonsense. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Thinking back, Booth groaned. Zack had drugged him. But he'd also said there were some things he was supposed to remember. Oh, yeah. He'd supposedly been drugged for the past few days straight. "Not much, really. Leaving the mess hall, maybe?" Booth lied casually, knowing how to hold his cards close to the chest when it came to talking to these institutional stiffs. "Where am I?"

"Montreal General, though your doctors keep getting furious calls to transfer you to Royal Victoria from a ... Dr. Brennan? To the best of my knowledge, she's not a medical doctor." The man frowned again in distaste, presumably angry that his day had been ruffled by my appearance in his life.

"No," Booth answered, smiling a little at Bones' tenacity. "She's my partner."

"Like, your girlfriend?" he asked.

Furrowing his brow at the stranger, Booth replied, "No." But that wasn't quite true anymore, was it? "I mean … maybe? It's complicated. We work … _worked_ together." Wanting to change the subject before he confused himself any further, he asked, "Who are you?"

"David Price," the man replied, holding out a (surprise, surprise) US State Department ID.

Booth asked, "The Pentagon send you?" getting a sharp nod in response.

"Sergeant Booth," the man sighed, standing up and looking down at him from beside the bed, "you don't remember anything about your time in captivity?"

Oh, what to say? This had to be believable. If they were going to let him see Bones anytime soon, Booth had to lay everything that had happened over the last few days at Zack's feet. Could he really do that? He didn't like it, throwing a … friend … to the wolves like that. Sure, Zack had masterminded everything, but Booth hadn't put up a fight, had he? He'd let Zack lead him away from his responsibilities and back to where he really wanted to be. And, after spending a few days with him, Seeley knew he'd never get Zack back into the hospital until he helped him solve this case. So, Booth had to paint him as the bad guy, as mentally unstable so they wouldn't throw him in a military prison after this was all over. Technically, he was a terrorist, sabotaging an American military base in enemy territory. He could be tried for treason, if they could prove Zack had any idea what he'd been doing. If they could prove Booth hadn't done everything in his power to stop Zack, he'd be tried for treason, too.

So, Booth frowned and lied through his teeth. "I knew him, or I used to," he told the man. "Zack. He worked for Bones … for Dr. Brennan. He wanted to know all these things about an old case…"

"What old case?" Price asked, like he had no idea what Booth was talking about.

"One of our cases for the Bureau," Booth explained, wondering what this guy's deal was.

Suddenly having that ah-ha moment, Price pointed at Booth and asked, "You're a fed?"

"Yeah, for almost fourteen years," Booth told him, furrowing his brow. "Who _exactly_ sent you?" he demanded, not liking for a second how little Price seemed to know.

"I'm sorry Sergeant Booth," he said, appearing sincere in his apology. "I just got a call from an Army Colonel telling me to get over here and ask you how this … Zack? … guy managed to take you from a secure base. She didn't say much else."

"How about," Booth insisted, most of his suspicion dissipated but seeing this as an opportunity to stall for more time to get his story straight, "you get this Colonel on the phone for me? Just so I know everything's above-board. I mean, I'm in a foreign country, I don't know you, those credentials _look_ real, but…"

Pressing his lips together, Price nodded stiffly and left, giving Booth a glimpse at the two soldiers guarding his door. He wondered if they were there to keep someone out, or to keep him in. Either way, Booth hated this situation he'd gotten himself in, not to mention the story percolating around in his brain about what Zack had done.

* * *

"They found him, Tempe!" Jared shouted into the phone, just about blasting Brennan's ear off. Though the speaker in her cell phone wasn't nearly powerful enough to do such a thing, she found the metaphor fitting for her current discomfort.

"Where is he?" she asked in what she hoped was a more reasonable tone of voice. "I just talked to him this morning, but he wouldn't say."

"Montreal. The state department's holding him at a hospital there. Um, Montreal General."

"Holding him?" Brennan asked, confused by why they might do that. And with Booth's history of neurological disease, he really should be overseen by the neurology ward at Royal Victoria. She'd have to make a few calls. "Did they find Zack, too?"

"Not that they told me," Jared replied. "Look, I have an important meeting I have to take today, so I can't go get him until tomorrow. Could you…?"

"I'll be on the next plane," she assured him, hoping she was answering the question he hadn't asked.

"Good," he sighed. "He shouldn't be alone in this. Look, I know what these debriefings are like. I conducted enough of them in my time. You have to keep your mouth shut and follow Seeley's lead, okay? If you tell them what you know, Tempe, especially the fact that Seel called you earlier, he could be in big trouble."

"So I can't tell them what I know?"

"Not about the calls, not about Zack giving you the case you've been working on, nothing if you can help it."

Brennan hated the idea, especially since it felt a lot like an order coming from Jared Booth, who had no right to order her around. But he cared about his brother, like she did, so that had to mean he had Booth's best interests in mind, right. "Okay," she agreed. "I will require an explanation eventually."

"Ask Seeley when you see him," Jared ordered her. He must not know how much it irritated her. If not for the itchy need to go book a flight to Montreal, she would have pointed this out.

Instead, Brennan asked Jared, "What's so important that you have to stay here?"

"I'm calling in a favor for him, Tempe. I've got a feeling he'll thank me for this, big time."

"You Booths and your feelings," Brennan sighed, exasperated. "I'll never understand it."

"Just go," Jared laughed. "Have him call me, okay?"

Brennan agreed and hung up. She had plane tickets to book.

* * *

When Lance left Angela's office to get his third cup of coffee of the day, he saw Dr. Brennan rush through the lab, pulling off her lab coat as she went and throwing it over a random chair as she passed. That was not normal behavior. Hurrying after her, setting his coffee down on a desk he hoped was safe, Sweets called, "Dr. Brennan, wait! What happened?"

"Oh, Sweets," she said breathlessly as she slowed and turned her head, but kept walking forward, toward the sliding glass doors. "I have to go to Montreal."

"Why? We're in the middle of a case."

"Booth is there," she replied, leading him through the Jeffersonian towards what Sweets suspected was the parking structure.

"Is he okay?" Lance asked, wondering if her haste was because Booth had been injured _again_.

"As far as I know. I think Jared would have mentioned if Booth was unwell."

"Have you thought about what you're going to say when you get there?" Sweets asked her, knowing she hadn't.

Giving him a sharp look, Brennan shook her head. "You think I need to think about what to say? I'm perfectly capable of speech, Dr. Sweets."

"Yeah," he agreed, following her into the elevator when it opened. "But this is the first time you'll see Booth since you've told him how you feel."

"You're trying to use psychology on me Dr. Sweets," she frowned. "I don't like it."

"I know you don't," Sweets chuckled. "But this is important, Dr. Brennan. Agent Booth has probably been through a lot in the past few days. He might need to lean on you."

"I've been his partner for five years," she pointed out, exiting the elevator and glaring at him when he followed, "I can be there for him."

"I just don't want you changing your mind once you see him," Lance explained. "Sometimes the fantasy of something is better than the reality. And then, when we're faced with the reality? It can be difficult to reconcile the two."

Stopping beside her car, Brennan turned and frowned at him. "I don't know what you mean by that and I don't care. When I get to Montreal, I will speak to Booth the same way I always have."

"That's what I'm afraid of!" Sweets cried.

"But," she pointed out, confused, "why shouldn't I?"

"You think you converse like a normal person, but you don't!" Sweets ground out. "You have all these frickin' _walls_ up around you, Brennan, and if you don't let them down when you see Booth for the first time since the airport…" Sweets sighed, knowing he had to warn her, but afraid of her likely response, "…he's going to think you've changed your mind!"

"No offense intended, Sweets," she said, jerking open her car door and dropping down into the driver's seat, "but Booth is quantifiably better at reading my facial expressions than you are. You're worrying about nothing."

"Maybe, maybe not," Lance said, keeping one hand on the top of her car door so she would think twice before slamming it in his face. "But it's something to think about at least, alright? I'm just trying to give you a little friendly advice. I won't be here much longer, Brennan. If something goes wrong, I won't be here to fix it."

Shooting him an angry and maybe slightly vulnerable look, Brennan slammed her car door shut despite Sweets' hand, and drove away. Lance wanted to run after her, to shake her by the shoulders and get her to understand what he was trying to tell her, but he didn't. If she had to get used to not having his help, Lance had to get used to not giving it. He had to remind himself why he was leaving and that Daisy was worth this sacrifice, because she was his family now. Not these people, not really.

* * *

Booth was startled awake by a commotion in the hallway outside his room. Blinking and consulting his watch – which the nurse had only given back to him after ten minutes of argument – Booth noticed that it was still early, just past nine o'clock. Whatever it was Zack fed him must have still been in his system. That and the fact that he'd been sleeping either in a cot or in a train/plane/bus seat for the past three weeks let him fall asleep so early.

"…refuse to comply, ma'am, then I'll have to resort to force," a man's voice said from outside and Booth recognized the tone as military. Military police, maybe. Wait. Ma'am?

Shit.

Scrambling out of bed and hissing in pain when his IV pulled sideways in his vein, Booth grabbed the needle and pulled it out despite the tape holding it in place. "No!" he called out to the guys guarding his room as he stalked over to the door. Pulling it open, he continued, "No one resort to force," and seeing his partner there, glaring at the taller MP like she wanted nothing more than to take him down by his pinky, Booth smiled. "Not even you, Bones."

"You know this woman, sir?" the other guard asked beside him, but Booth couldn't tear his eyes away from Bones so he could look at the man.

Throwing at him a definite, "Yes," Booth waited what felt like a million years for Bones to break eye contact with the first guard and look at him. He held his breath, watching her, noticing how tired she looked with those bags under her eyes, her hair pulled back like that, and most of her make-up rubbed off, like she'd applied it yesterday morning and hadn't bothered doing it again since. Not that he probably looked any better after four days on the road with hardly any opportunity to wash up, standing there in the door to his hospital room, in his hospital gown. Yikes! Shifting his hips, Booth noticed that yes, he was still wearing his boxers, so that was something to be thankful for.

He'd dreamed about seeing her again, at the reflecting pool after he came home from Afghanistan. How he'd wear his dress uniform and she would be so proud of him. How she would look after a year in Indonesia, probably tanned and wearing chunky Indonesian jewelry. They would both look that year older, having been apart, and Bones would hug him, and maybe everything would be okay again.

Instead, as Bones' eyes slid over to him, Booth realized this was so much better than what he'd dreamed. Especially when she took a sharp breath and threw herself into his arms, lips first. Oh, God, she was kissing him and every cell in his body felt it, his arms snapping around her and hugging her tightly like it had always been this way. She'd meant what she said over the phone! She'd meant _this_! Seeley had wanted to believe, with everything he had, but after what had happened when he told her how he felt, once and for all, he hadn't quite let himself believe it.

But now she was here, in his arms, kissing him fiercely as if to make up for lost time, and Seeley knew, he _knew_ that she felt the same. There was no mistaking this. And he was never letting go.

* * *

_A/N: See? What did I tell you? In reply, reviews are much appreciated! Also, thanks to my beta, Downside-Left!_


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